Rank-optimal channel selection strategy in cognitive networks

A learning strategy for distributed channel selection in Cognitive Radio networks is proposed. This strategy helps quality of service (QoS) provisioning such that competing secondary users cooperatively converge to their rank-optimal channels while channel availability statistics are initially unknown. By this convergence, collision reaches zero since users eventually work on their own orthogonal channels. The proposed learning strategy, k^th-MAB, is inspired from the Multi-Armed Bandit problem but it converges to the k^th best arm. The rank-optimal channel for each user is identified based on the user's QoS demands. We believe that this learning and allocation policy provides a better level of QoS for secondary users since evaluation results represent order optimality in terms of the average throughput.