Power control in cognitive radios under cooperative and non-cooperative spectrum sensing

In an opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) based cognitive radio system, a secondary user (SU) is allowed to access the licensed spectrum of the primary user (PU) when it is inactive. Conventional power allocation strategies, which do not consider spectrum sensing information (SSI), may not be optimal in OSA based cognitive radio system because when the SU mis-detects the PU's presence, the interference from the PU will cause a lower data rate or a higher outage probability to the SU. In this paper, power allocation strategies for each frame are designed based on the SSI gathered by the SU during the sensing period of the frame. We consider both cooperative and non-cooperative spectrum sensing scenarios. In non-cooperative spectrum sensing, the SU transmitter (SU-Tx) has its SSI while in cooperative spectrum sensing, the SU-Tx has both its SSI and the SU receiver's (SU-Rx's) SSI. Using the SSIs, power allocation strategies are designed to either maximize the average data rate or minimize the outage probability of the SU. The proposed power allocation strategies have to ensure that the PU is sufficiently protected and the SU satisfies its long-term transmit power budget. Optimization of the sensing time is also considered to further enhance the performances of the system.