A survey on spectrum management in cognitive radio networks

Abstract

With the rapid development of wireless communication, the scarcity of spectrum becomes more and more prominent. Cognitive radio is proposed to overcome the problem of low spectrum utilisation by offering large bandwidth to mobile users via the dynamic spectrum access techniques and heterogeneous wireless architectures. In fact, it provides for users the ability to interact with the RF environment and perfectly adapt the transmission parameters. However, the CR networks must overcome some challenges such as the channel fluctuations, the available frequencies and the various QoS requirements of different applications. Spectrum management presents a promising solution for the realisation of these challenges. This paper surveys recent research advances linked to cognitive radios and open research issues in spectrum management. Existing works in the spectrum sensing, spectrum sharing and spectrum decision are reviewed and discussed in detail. For each issue, we highlight the key challenges of open research.