Towards a strategic satisfactory sensing for QoS self-provisioning in cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, secondary users (SUs) face two conflicting objectives. Each SU seeks to minimize the sensing duration while maximizing the detection probability of primary users (PU) to avoid interfering with their transmissions. Both objectives have a substantial effect on energy efficiency. This paper investigates a noncooperative setting for selecting the sensing duration when multiple SUs operate in the same network. Here, each SU has a certain throughput requirement. The interaction among SUs is captured via a satisfaction strategic game with explicitly stated throughput demands. We prove that depending on the throughput requirements, either zero, one or two Satisfaction Equilibria (SE) exist. We then provide a fully distributed learning algorithm (SELA) to discover them. Extensive simulation results show the validity of the proposed SELA and illustrate the relationship between the throughput demand and the sensing duration.