Sensing-assisted spectrum access strategy and optimisation in cognitive radio networks

This research developed radio access protocols for Cognitive Radio (CR) networks to address capacity and quality of service issues for improved mobile user experience. CR is growing technology designed to address radio spectrum scarcity, a critical issue in future generation wireless communications. It allows mobile users (secondary users) to sense and access unused spectrum without interfering with existing users (primary users). By integrating two major components of the CR technology, i.e. spectrum sensing, and spectrum access, into a cross-layer framework, the developed access protocols achieve increased throughput with low probability of interference compared to existing radio access protocols