Performance of round robin policies for dynamic multichannel access

We consider two simple round-robin sensing policies for dynamic multi-channel access in cognitive radio networks-one in which channel switching takes place when the primary user is sensed to be present, and one in which a channel switching takes place when the primary user is sensed to be absent. Prior work has shown that these policies are each optimal under certain conditions when the primary user occupancy on each channel can be described as an independent two-state Markov chain. In this work, we consider a very general case where the primary user occupancy on each channel is an arbitrary stationary and ergodic two-state process, and derive bounds on their performance. The bounds provide insights into conditions under which these extremely simple policies perform well.