Dynamic Spectrum Reservation for CR Networks in the Presence of Channel Failures: Channel Allocation and Reliability Analysis

Providing channel access opportunities for new service requests and guaranteeing continuous connections for ongoing flows until service completion are two challenges for service provisioning in wireless networks. Channel failures, which are typically caused by hardware and software failures or/and by intrinsic instability in radio transmissions, can easily result in network performance degradation. In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), secondary transmissions are inherently vulnerable to connection breaks due to licensed users' arrivals as well as channel failures. To explore the advantages of channel reservation on performance improvement in error-prone channels, we propose and analyze a dynamic channel reservation (DCR) algorithm and a dynamic spectrum access (DSA) scheme with three access privilege variations. The key idea of the DCR algorithm is to reserve a dynamically adjustable number of channels for the interrupted services to maintain service retainability for ongoing users or to enhance channel availability for new users. Furthermore, the DCR algorithm is embedded in the DSA scheme enabling spectrum access of primary and secondary users with different access privileges based on access flexibility for licensed shared access. The performance of such a CRN in the presence of homogeneous and heterogeneous channel failures is investigated considering different channel failure and repair rates.