SPA: Almost Optimal Accessing of Nonstochastic Channels in Cognitive Radio Networks

In this work, we address the spectrum utilization problem in cognitive radio (CR) networks, in which a CR can only utilize spectrum opportunities when the channel is idle. One challenge for a CR is to balance exploring new channels and exploiting existing channel, due to the fact that the channel availability and channel quality, potentially heterogeneous and time-dependent, are often unknown in advance due to the large number of channels, and the limited hardware capability of single CR. In this work, we propose joint channel sensing, probing, and accessing schemes for secondary users in cognitive radio networks. Our method has time and space complexity O(N · u) for a network with N channels and u secondary users, while applying classic methods requires exponential time complexity. We prove that, even when channel states are selected by adversary (thus nonstochastic), it results in a total regret uniformly upper bounded by Θ(√TN log N), w.h.p, for communication lasts for T timeslots. Our protocol can be implemented in a distributed manner due to the nonstochastic channel assumption. Our experiments show that our schemes achieve almost optimal throughput compared with an optimal static strategy, and perform significantly better than previous methods in many settings.