Single parity check product codes for erasure recovery in opportunistic spectrum access

We address the use of single parity check product codes (SPCPC) for erasure recovery in opportunistic spectrum access schemes, where erasures are packets lost during a collision with the primary user (PU) due to sensing impairments (non detection). Our main motivation in using SPCPC is their low decoding complexity. We derive an analytical performance bound for these product codes when the PU's activity is described by a two-state On/Off model, and give a comparison with simulation results. The main result of the paper is the existence of a good functioning point on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve [1] in terms of spectrum reuse efficiency for the secondary user (SU). Various product codes are compared according to their minimum distance, length and erasure recovery capability for different primary user's activity rate.