Detection error aware spectrum handoff mechanism for cognitive radios

Spectrum handoff is a key mechanism for proper and efficient operation of cognitive radios. A handoff occurs when the current operating channel must be freed by secondary users due to the arrival of a primary user. This mechanism is responsible for searching for a new idle licensed channel for secondary use, a task known as channel selection. The order in which the channels are sensed during the handoff has a great impact on performance. This paper proposes a new spectrum handoff scheme that considers the existence of errors in primary user detection to achieve a better channel ordering in terms of spectrum utilization efficiency and primary user interference. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism outperforms other mechanisms from the literature.