A feedback-based access scheme for cognitive radio systems

In this paper, we consider the design of access schemes for secondary users in cognitive radio systems based on the primary user feedback information. We consider a secondary user employing a random access scheme with an access probability that depends on the primary user feedback state. We show that the proposed scheme can enhance the system performance in terms of the secondary throughput and/or primary user delay while guaranteeing a certain quality of service (QoS) for the primary user; this is due to the fact that the proposed scheme avoids sure collisions between the primary and secondary users. The proposed scheme can be deployed with any other random access based scheme and it always results in a performance gain using the extra piece of information coming from the primary user feedback. © 2011 IEEE.