Performance of cognitive radio spectrum access with intra- and inter-handoff

Opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) is a technology that allows unlicensed users to access spectrum holes and to provide so efficient use of radio resources. Most studies done on OSA focus on the situation when the unlicensed user performs the spectrum handoff only within a single cognitive radio network (so-called intra-handoff). In this paper, we consider the users (licensed or unlicensed) to be able to do inter-handoff among different cognitive radio cells as well. The cells provide priority to inter-handoff users. By considering multiple cells being in steady-state and showing identical statistics, the arrival rates of inter-handoff users are determined. We study the OSA performance of unlicensed users under both intra- and inter-handoff schemes, with respect to the blocking and forced-termination probabilities of unlicensed users as well as the unlicensed user service-completion and inter-handoff throughputs. Our Markov chain based numerical analysis is validated by simulation experiments.