On distribution and limits of information dissemination latency and speed in mobile cognitive radio networks

Dissemination latency and speed are central to the applications of cognitive radio networks, which have become an important component of current communication infrastructure. In this paper, we investigate the distributions and limits of information dissemination latency and speed in a cognitive radio network where licensed users (primary users) are static and cognitive radio users (secondary users) are mobile. We show that the dissemination latency depends on the stationary spatial distribution and mobility capability α (characterizing the region that a mobile secondary user can reach) of secondary users. Given any stationary spatial distribution, we find that there exists a critical value on α, below which the latency and speed are heavy-tailed and above which the right tails of their distribution are bounded by Gamma random variables. We further show that as the network grows to infinity, the latency asymptotically scales linearly with the “distance” (characterized by transmission hops or Euclidean distance) between the source and the destination. Our results are validated through simulations.