Hybrid spectrum sharing through adaptive spectrum handoff for cognitive radio networks

Sharing available resources in cognitive radio networks can benefit from spectrum handoff to enhance the rate performance by switching from current unavailable channels to the available ones. However, spectrum handoff can cause transmission interruptions leading to the degradation of services. In this work, we aim to balance the tradeoff between benefits of spectrum handoff and their negative impacts on spectrum sharing. Therefore, we develop an adaptive hybrid strategy that includes novel static and dynamic spectrum sharing based essentially on a rate compensation concept. The former is suitable when spectrum handoff is not necessary. The latter allows performing spectrum handoff to compensate the lost rate from the unavailable periods and improve the rate performance. We compare our hybrid strategy with a fully dynamic one and an optimization framework. Through simulations, we show that our strategy reduces the number of handoffs significantly while the achieved rate is fulfilling compared to the optimal.