A Hardware Implementation for Efficient Spectrum Access in Cognitive Radio Networks

Opportunistic spectrum access is a propitious technique to overcome the under-utilization of spectrum bands. In this work, we design an experimental test-bed for evaluating an un-slotted spectrum access scheme under real indoor environment conditions. To this end, we use the USRP software defined radio platform along with the GNURadio software that incorporates the PHY and MAC functions and modules. Our contribution is multi-fold. First, we design a MAC protocol to integrate the packet based transmission of the coexisting PU/SU network, while compensating for spectrum sensing imperfection as well as collision detection faults. Second, we evaluate the USRP-induced latency (delay) and show that it has random behavior. We work around it to obtain a fixed packet transmission time which is crucial for the channel access scheme realization and evaluation. Third, we perform helping experiments to quantify the spectrum sensing imperfection in terms of false alarm and detection probabilities. We also quantify the imperfection in collision detection. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the whole channel access scheme and compare its results to the classical sense-transmit scheme. We show that 28.5% increase in SU throughput can be achieved for the same PU packet collision rate.