Effective Monitoring of Freeloading User in the Presence of Active User in Cognitive Radio Networks

In cognitive networks, primary and secondary users (PUs and SUs) share the radio resource according to fair regulations. The goal of this paper is to introduce a new method to detect an unfair user (freeloader) that hides its radio signal under the noise floor in the presence of an active (either primary or secondary) user. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated by theoretical analysis and computer simulations. The probability of detection is expressed, for constant false-alarm rates, as a function of both the active signal power and the background noise variance. The results show the effectiveness of the new monitoring algorithm in several operating cases.