On the Dissemination Latency of Cognitive Radio Networks under General Node Mobility

Dissemination latency is critical to the applications of cognitive radio networks, which have become an important component of current communication infrastructure. This paper investigates the distribution of dissemination latency in a cognitive radio network where licensed users (primary users) are static and cognitive radio users (secondary users) are moving under general mobility, which provides fundamental understanding of the fastest information delivery that a mobile cognitive radio network is able to accommodate. 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 is heavy-tailed and above which the right tail of the distribution is bounded by some Gamma random variable. Moreover, we find that although the traffic and spatial density of primary users inversely impact the expected latency, they make no influence on the tail distribution of the latency. The results in this paper are validated through numerical studies and can advance our understanding of CR network performance.