Optimal spectrum access for a rechargeable cognitive radio user based on energy buffer state

This paper investigates the maximum throughput for a rechargeable secondary user (SU) sharing the spectrum with a primary user (PU) plugged to a reliable power supply. The SU maintains a finite energy queue and harvests energy from natural resources, e.g., solar, wind and acoustic noise. We propose a probabilistic access strategy by the SU based on the number of packets at its energy queue. In particular, when the energy queue is in a certain state, the SU probabilistically uses a total number of energy packets that is at most equal to the number of packets at its energy queue. The probability of using certain amount of energy in a given state is optimizable. We investigate the effect of the energy arrival rate, the amount of energy per energy packet, and the capacity of the energy queue on the SU throughput under fading channels. © 2015 IEEE.