Cognitive spectrum handoff game in the TV white space with radio environment map

Abstract

TV white space (TVWS) can solve the spectrum scarce problem caused by exponentially growing traffic demand in future wireless communication services. Motivated by FCC's recent ruling for TVWS access with a database, we propose a database-like Radio Environment Map (REM) based framework to improve cognitive networks' capacity. At first, through our measured UHF TV data, we find TV channels exhibit constant patterns which mean channel availabilities in future can be predicted for cognitive access with the REM system. We design a detailed REM implementation framework in a multi-service (between UHF TV and cellular services) spectrum reuse scenario to solve cellular networks' spectrum scarce problem. We then propose a game formulation for the distributed TVWS access problem considering spectrum handoff cost. Numerical results are shown to evaluate the Nash equilibrium's convergence speed and channel switching cost.