RESEARCH Open Access

Delay performance of cognitive radio networks for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications Hung Tran*, Trung Q Duong and Hans-Jürgen Zepernick In this paper, we analyze the packet transmission time in spectrum sharing systems where a secondary user (SU) simultaneously accesses the spectrum licensed to primary users (PUs). In particular, under the assumption of an independent identical distributed Rayleigh block fading channel, we investigate the effect of the peak interference power constraint imposed by multiple PUs on the packet transmission time of the SU. Utilizing the concept of timeout, exact closed-form expressions of outage probability and average packet transmission time of the SU are derived. In addition, employing the characteristics of the M/G/1 queuing model, the impact of the number of PUs and their peak interference power constraint on the stable transmission condition and the average waiting time of packets at the SU are examined. Moreover, we then extend the analysis for point-to-point to point-to-multipoint communications allowing for multiple SUs and derive the related closed-form expressions for outage probability and successful transmission probability for the best channel condition. Numerical results are provided to corroborate our theoretical results and to illustrate applications of the derived closed-form expressions for performance evaluation of cognitive radio networks