WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/wcm.2273

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Interference-aware spectrum handover for

cognitive radio networks
Dianjie Lu1,2 , Xiaoxia Huang2* , Weile Zhang3 and Jianping Fan2
1
School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
2
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
3
School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China

ABSTRACT
Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technique for future wireless networks, which significantly improves spectrum
utilization. In CR networks, when the primary users (PUs) appear, the secondary users (SUs) have to switch to other
available channels to avoid the interference to PUs. However, in the multi-SU scenario, it is still a challenging problem
to make an optimal decision on spectrum handover because of the the accumulated interference constraint of PUs
and SUs. In this paper, we propose an interference-aware spectrum handover scheme that aims to maximize the CR
network capacity and minimize the spectrum handover overhead by coordinating SUs’ handover decision optimally in the
PU–SU coexisted CR networks. On the basis of the interference temperature model, the spectrum handover problem is
formulated as a constrained optimization problem, which is in general a non-deterministic polynomial-time hard problem.
To address the problem in a feasible way, we design a heuristic algorithm by using the technique of Branch and Bound.
Finally, we combine our spectrum handover scheme with power control and give a convenient solution in a single-SU
scenario. Experimental results show that our algorithm can improve the network performance efficiently. Copyright © 2012
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEYWORDS
interference temperature; spectrum handover; power control

*Correspondence
Xiaoxia Huang, 1068 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen University Town, Shenzhen, China.
E-mail: xx.huang@siat.ac.cn

1. INTRODUCTION
Cognitive radio (CR) is an effective method to alleviate
the frequency scarcity problem [1]. While primary users
(PUs) have the priority to access the licensed spectrum,
secondary users (SUs) can opportunistically use spectrum
when no harmful effects to the PUs are introduced [2,3].
Intuitively, when PUs appear, SUs have two options,
staying in the original channel or switching to another
channel. In the former case, SUs have to suspend their
transmission and waste time to wait until the PUs complete
their transmission. Similarly, in the latter case, the SUs
evacuate the occupied spectrum and move to some other
available ones. This is the so-called spectrum handover.
However, frequent spectrum handovers will cause sig-
nificant performance degradation to the SUs because of
the large handover overhead such as the establishment of
the wireless connections and re-establishment of the TCP
links. If the number of licensed bands is limited, the SU
may fail to detect any available channel and have to stop
its transmission until an available channel emerges. Then,
the situation becomes the same as the previous case. There-
fore, for SUs, either staying or changing channel requires
extra overhead, causing significantly degraded capacity.
Indeed, SUs can coexist with PUs on the same licensed
channels. FCC [4] suggested interference temperature
model (ITM) to regulate the SUs’ behavior. According
to this model, the SUs are allowed to coexist with the
PUs when the SUs’ aggregated interference to the PUs is
below a certain level. In other words, SUs can appropri-
ately coordinate their spectrum handover decision to fully
exploit all the spectrum opportunities, while the interfer-
ence to the PUs is low. In this paper, to maximize the
utilization of the spectrum opportunity and the network
capacity, we propose an interference-aware spectrum
handover scheme based on ITM. We extend the ITM to
a multi-SU spectrum sharing cognitive network and for-
mulate the decision problem of spectrum handover as a

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Interference-aware spectrum handover
constrained optimization problem. We show that such a
problem is, in general, non-deterministic polynomial-time
hard and that obtaining the optimal solution is computa-
tionally infeasible. A heuristic algorithm based on the tech-
nique of Branch and Bound is given to address this problem
in a workable way. Finally, we introduce power control
into the proposed scheme and give a convenient solution
in a single-SU scenario. In the single-SU CR network,
only the interference of SUs-to-PU needs to be consid-
ered. The problem can be simply solved by calculating
the transmission range not interfering with PU. Simu-
lation results show that compared with two alternative
approaches, namely a random algorithm and a conserva-
tive algorithm, the network capacity can be increased by
up to 31% and 74%, respectively.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
reviews the related literature on the spectrum access
and handover. Section 3 presents the system model. We
formulate the spectrum handover problem as a constrained
optimization model in Section 4. Section 5 extend our pro-
posed model based on power control mechanism. Section 6
shows our simulation scenario and discusses the simulation
results. Finally, we conclude the paper in Section 7.
2. RELATED WORK
The prior works on spectrum access in the CR network
can be divided into two categories: the overlay access
and the underlay access. In the overlay way, SUs use the
licensed channel opportunistically. Zheng et al. [5] pro-
pose a color-sensitive graph approach which character-
izes the interference between the PUs and the SUs using
a binary model. In [6], the authors present a proactive
sensing model to discover as many spectrum opportuni-
ties as possible in advance, while minimizing the average
time taken to detect a vacant frequency band. However,
in their works, the coexistence of PUs and SUs on the
same channel is not considered. In the underlay way, an
SU can operate on the same frequency with PUs, provided
the interference temperature at each licensed receiver does
not exceed a threshold. Clancy [7] formalizes this ITM
to maximize both the capacity and the spectral efficiency
in a specific RF environment. In [8–11], power control
rules are adopted to reduce the interference to PUs. Game
theory is generally used to achieve the tradeoff between the
spectrum utilization and interference [12,13].
As a critical issue in CR networks, spectrum handover
plays an important role in spectrum access. Recent
works [14–16] have explored different spectrum handover
schemes to balance the switching overhead and the
spectrum opportunities. In [14], the authors proposed
a proactive-decision spectrum handover algorithm. This
algorithm can reduce the time-consuming wideband sens-
ing through finding the available channels before PUs
appear. Nevertheless, this algorithm should keep the
long-term observation outcomes and make the channel
sequences ready before data transmission, which increases
D. Lu et al.
the overhead of storage and computation. In addition, it is
also necessary to resolve the issue that the pre-selected
target channel may no longer be available when the trans-
mission begins. Mohamed et al. [15] proposed a scheme
to reduce the number of spectrum handover by using unli-
censed channels as backup channels. However, if the pool
of unlicensed channels is limited, the scheme degenerates
to the traditional one. L. Giupponi et al. [16] proposed a
fuzzy-based approach that can flexibly make decisions on
spectrum handover in the context characterized by uncer-
tain, incomplete, and heterogeneous spectrum usage infor-
mation. The main weakness of the fuzzy-based approach is
the dependability of their decisions on the way how mem-
bership functions and fuzzy inference rules are set. Feng
et al. [17] extended the spectrum handover problem to min-
imize the total latency for multi-hop spectrum handover
while the network remains connected. In [17], the order
of spectrum handover for multiple links is coordinated to
maintain the network connectivity. With the coordination
result, rerouting is triggered before the spectrum handover
really happens in order to protect the communication from
interruption. However, in these works, the interference of
SUs-to-SUs has not been considered, which will degrade
the channel capacity because there is no coordination
among the SUs. Different to the prior works, we consider
both SUs-to-PU interference and SUs-to-SUs interference
to optimize the CR network performance. In this paper, an
interference-aware spectrum handover scheme is proposed
to maximize the utilization of the spectrum opportunity and
the network capacity.
3. SYSTEM MODEL
We consider a CR network consisting of Mp licensed
channels and Ns SUs. Each licensed channel can be
denoted by C h.fc ; B/ where fc is the central frequency
and B is the bandwidth. In this scenario, we assume
N SUs share a common licensed channel where N 2
f1; 2; : : : ; Ns g. However, SUs’ transmission will cause
harmful interference to a PU when the PU appears on the
licensed channel. As we can see from Figure 1, PU trans-
mitter (PT) is sending data to the PU receiver (PR). For
the SU transmitter, the outer circle (dashed) represents the
interference range, and the inner circle (solid) represents
the transmission range. In Figure 1, PR is in the interfer-
ence range of the SU transmitter, where the emissions from
the SU transmitter might cause unbearable interference
which exceeds the interference temperature limit to PR.
Because PUs are licensed users, they have the priority to
access the licensed bands whenever and wherever needed.
SUs opportunistically send their data by using the avail-
able licensed bands. For example, as shown in Figure 2(a),
P U 1 and P U 2 hold licensed bands C h1 and C h2, respec-
tively, and S U 1 and S U 2 coexist on the common licensed
band C h1 simultaneously. We assume that all the SUs are
equipped with reconfigurable transceiver that can tune in
any frequency band. Usually, there are two cases in the
Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
D. Lu et al. Interference-aware spectrum handover

Receiver

SU PR PT
Interference Signal
PU
Transmitter
Noise

Figure 1. Interference between primary user (PU) and secondary user (SU). PR, PU receiver; PT, PU transmitter.

PU1
SU1
Ch1 PU2

Ch1
SU2

(a)

PU1
SU1
Ch2 PU2

Ch1
SU2

(b)

Figure 2. Coexistence of primary user (PUs) and secondary user (SUs). (a) SUs’ transmission without PU: both PU 1 and PU 2 do
not come; SU 1 and SU 2 coexist on the same channel Ch1. (b) SUs’ transmission with PU: when PU 1 comes and PU 2 does not,
SU 1 switches to channel Ch2; SU 2 continues its transmission on channel Ch1.

conventional spectrum handover schemes. In the ‘best’ But this will increase the spectrum sensing and switching
case, when a PU appears, all SUs switch to other idle cost and decrease the capacity of current channel. More-
channels without causing harmful interference to the PR. over, the performance becomes even worse if the number

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
Interference-aware spectrum handover
of licensed channels is limited. In the ‘worst’ case, all SUs
remain in the channel. SUs should suspend their transmis-
sion in order to not interfere with the PU until it leaves.
A compromise solution is to allow part of SUs to switch
to other channels, while the other part of SUs continue to
use the current channel. Thus the coordination among the
SUs on the same channel is necessary to decide whether to
switch or not while keeping the accumulated interference
below the interference temperature limit.
In our scheme, firstly, each SU transmitter measures
the interference temperature on the channel and exchanges
it with other SUs using the same channel. Then, all
the SUs will coordinate to make an optimal spectrum
handover decision. Finally, on the basis of the decision,
some SU transmitters will continue their transmission and
the others switch to other available channels. As shown in
Figure 2(b), when P U 1 appears on C h1, S U 1 switches to
channel C h2, whereas S U 2 continues its transmission on
channel C h1.
3.1. Interference temperature
The concept of interference temperature is similar to that
of noise temperature. As illustrated in Figure 3, for a given
area, FCC establishes an interference temperature limit
TL .fc ; B/. This value of TL .fc ; B/ would be the maximum
amount of tolerable interference for a given central
frequency fc and bandwidth B in a particular location.
In this paper, we use the following formula to define the
interference temperature [18].
TN .fc ; B/ C TI .fc ; B/  TL .fc ; B/ (1)
where TN .fc ; B/ is the original noise floor, TI .fc ; B/ is
the interference temperature of the channel with central
frequency fc and bandwidth B. TI .fc ; B/ can be given as
PI .fc ; B/
TI .fc ; B/ D (2)
kB
Figure 3. Interference temperature.
D. Lu et al.
where Boltzmann’s constant k is 1:38  1023 J/K.
PI .fc ; B/ is the interference power over the channel with
central frequency fc and bandwidth B.
3.2. Path loss
We assume that the path loss is characterized by [19]
f .r/ D 10n log.r/ (3)
where r represents the physical distance between the
sender and the receiver. Let n be the path loss exponent,
which is usually a constant in the range of 2–4.
3.3. Channel capacity
For the definition of channel capacity C , Shannon–Hartley
theorem states
 
S
C D B  log2 1 C (4)
No
where B is the bandwidth of the licensed channel, S is the
received signal power at the SU receiver. No is the noise
and interference power over the band.
4. THE SPECTRUM
HANDOVER MODEL
During the handover operation, the communication of the
SU has to be interrupted, and the network connectivity
will be seriously affected. From this point of view, large
latency can be introduced. Also, packets may be lost. As
a solution, SUs can coordinate to continue their transmis-
sion or switch to other available channels. However, it also
raises new challenges, such as how to make the optimal
decision of spectrum handover considering both the
SU–PU interference and the SU–SU interference. In this
section, we firstly give an extended interference tempera-
ture model (EITM), which extend the ITM to a multi-SU
spectrum sharing cognitive network. In addition, we pro-
pose a spectrum handover optimization model to maximize
the channel capacity based on EITM.
4.1. Extended interference
temperature model
We assume that the PT is far from the PR and SUs. When
PU pairs appear, the transmission from PT leads to higher
interference, which makes it difficult for SUs to continue
transmission. The accumulated interference caused by SUs
also should be reduced to guarantee the PR’s signal to
interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). So, SUs should make
a decision of whether switch or not.
Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
D. Lu et al. Interference-aware spectrum handover

SR ST PR PT
1
2
3

Transmission
K Interference

Figure 4. Interference model in multi-user cognitive radio network. PR, primary user (PU) receiver; PT, PU transmitter; SR, secondary
user (SU) receiver; ST, SU transmitter.

As shown in Figure 4, there are K .K  N / SUs coexist switching overhead. First, we give the channel capacity for
with a PU transmission pair on the same licensed band. The S Ui , which can be described by the following formula [18]
dashed lines represent the interference, and the solid lines
0 1
represent the transmission. We can see that all the K SU
transmitters cause accumulated interference to the PR. At B i C
B Li i Psu_tx C
the same time, each SU transmitter will interfere with any Ci D B log2 B
B1 C
C
C
K
P
other SU receivers. There are two interference constraints @ j A
kBTN .fc ; B/ C Lj i Psu_tx
in EITM. Firstly, SUs must limit the accumulated inter- j D1;j ¤i
ference introduced in the PU band below a certain level. (7)
Secondly, SUs should coordinate to initiate the non-
interfering transmission. Mathematically, these can be where Li i represents multiplicative attenuation due to
modeled as follows. fading and path loss between the i th SU transmitter and
As mentioned in Section 3, SUs-to-PU interference i th SU receiver. And then, we introduce the maximum
should not exceed the interference temperature limit TPU capacity function in the next part.
at a PR. For the PR, we must satisfy
4.2. Spectrum handover
K optimization model
P i
Mi Psu_tx
iD1 In this subsection, we formulate the spectrum handover
TN .fc ; B/ C  TPU .fc ; B/ (5)
kB decision as an optimization problem to maximize the CR
network capacity based on EITM mentioned earlier.
where Mi is a fractional value between 0 and 1, Let xi denote the decision of S Ui . If S Ui decides to
representing a multiplicative attenuation due to fading and switch to another channel, we set xi D 0, otherwise,
path loss between the i th SU transmitter and the licensed xi D 1. We further introduce x D Œx1 ; x2 ; : : : ; xN 
i
receiver. Psu_tx is the i th SU’s transmit power. to represent the decision of SUs. Then, the maximum
Moreover, in our model, SUs-to-SUs interference also capacity function is given by
j
should not exceed an interference temperature TSU for
the j th SU receiver. Then, the following inequality could arg max F.x/ (8)
x
be obtained.
where
K
P i
Lij Psu_tx N
X
iD1;i¤j j F.x/ D xi B  log2 .1 C si /
TN .fc ; B/ C  TSU .fc ; B/ 8j 2 N
kB iD1
(6)
and
where Lij is similar to Mi , except that it represents
multiplicative path loss between the i th SU transmitter and i
Li i Psu_tx
j th SU receiver. si D
N
P j
Our goal is to maximize the capacity of CR network kBTN .fc ; B/ C xj  Lj i Psu_tx
on the licensed channel while minimizing the spectrum j D1;j ¤i

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DOI: 10.1002/wcm
Interference-aware spectrum handover D. Lu et al.

The interference constraint for SUs-to-PU is 4.3. The solution

The optimization problem (12) is a multi-constraint

AxT  ˛ (9)
nonlinear 0/1 integer programming problem which is in
general non-deterministic polynomial-time hard. In order
i
where A D ŒA1 ; A2 ; : : : ; AN  with Ai D Mi Psu_tx and to solve this problem, we resort to the well-known Least
˛ D .TPU .fc ; B/  TN .fc ; B//kB. Cost Branch and Bound (LCBB) [20] algorithm. The basic
The interference for SUs-to-SUs can be described as idea of LCBB algorithm is built on two concepts. The first
a symmetric matrix where the entries value indicate one is Branch, which mainly focuses on how to select a
whether the interference exists. We denote the interference better extended node E (the live node whose children are
matrix as currently being generated) in the state-space tree so as to
obtain the optimal solution quickly. The second concept is
2 3 Bound. That is, kill the nodes that are unlikely to produce
0 Y2;1  YN ;1 the optimal solution to reduce searching space. In general,
6 Y1;2 0  YN ;2 7
6 7 LCBB is often used to solve a minimization problem. So,
YD6 : :: :: :: 7 (10)
4 :: : : : 5 we covert the objective function to
Y1;N Y2;N  0
arg min .F.x// (13)
x
where
Least Cost Branch and Bound algorithm relies on the

0 if i D j ; least cost function c.nodex / of a node nodex to select
Yij D 1i N the extended node and kill nodes. To simplify it, we
x i xj if i ¤ j ;
define the lower bound and upper bound of the least
cost function as LBB.nodex / and UBB.nodex /, which
We also denote satisfy LBB.nodex /  c.nodex /  UBB.nodex /.
The node with minimum LBB.nodex / will be selected
2 3
L1;1 L2;1  LN ;1 as the extended node. We denote upper as the upper
6 L1;2 L2;2  LN ;2 7 bound of a minimum cost solution. All live nodes with
6 7
LD6 :: :: :: :: 7 LBB.nodex / > upper will be killed. When a new created
4 : : : : 5
live node nodey satisfies the condition UBB.nodey / <
L1;N L2;N  LN ;N upper, upper should be updated by UBB.nodey /.
Figure 5 shows the flowchart of our algorithm. In the ini-
tialization step, the items of x are set to 0. It is convenient to
sort the SUs descendingly by their capacity-to-interference
2 1 3
Psu_tx ratios. We denote E:cp as the total capacity currently
6 2
Psu_tx 7
6 7 achieved and E:level as the level of the node E in the
and PD6 :: 7 state-space tree. In the while loop, if E:level DD N C 1
4 : 5
N
and E:cp < upper, E is an optimal answer node. The
Psu_tx node will be recorded, and upper should be updated by
the current profit E:cp. If E is not the answer node (has
The interference constraint for SUs-to-SUs is not been extended to the last level, i.e., E:level < N C 1),
we will create the left child El (xi D 1) and right child
Er (xi D 0) of E. As for El , if current x satisfies the con-
.Y ı L/ P  ˇ (11) straints (9), then add El to the live node list; otherwise, kill
El . Similarly, for the node Er , we calculate the LBB.Er /
where ˇ D Œˇ1 ; ˇ2 ; : : : ; ˇN T , ˇi is the and add Er to the live node list only if LBB.Er / < upper
 interference
i .f ; B/ and x satisfies the constraint (9) (11). Here, we do not
threshold for the i th SU, and ˇi D TSU c
 compute the lower and upper bound of El because it
TN .fc ; B/ kB. ı denotes the element-wise product.
is not difficult to find that LBB.El / D LBB.E/ and
Thus, the constrained optimization problem can be for-
UBB.El / D UBB.E/. After generating new nodes, we
mulated as
update the value of upper. Finally, we choose a new live
node with minimum LBB to be the next extended node.
maxfF.x/g One of the key problems in our LCBB algorithm is how
s.t. to compute LBB and UBB of a node. Algorithm 1 and 2
AxT  ˛; (12) shows the basic procedure. We denote cw as the current
.Y ı L/ P  ˇ; interference total, wi as the incremental interference and
xi ; xj 2 f0; 1g; 1  i  N ; 1  j  N pi as the throughput benefits when xi is set to 1. k is

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
D. Lu et al. Interference-aware spectrum handover

Initialization
Create a root
node E

The LBB of E Output the

no
is not larger than best solution
upper ANS

yes

E is an yes E is the
answer node best solution no
till now

no yes

Extend E ANS = E
Get LBB and UBB Set the current profit
Kill nodes if necessary of E to upper

Selet a node E with

Update upper
minimum LBB

Figure 5. Flowchart of our Least Cost Branch and Bound algorithm.

Algorithm 1: Algorithm for computing the LBB Algorithm 2: Algorithm for computing the UBB
Input: cp; cw; k; x Input: cp; cw; k; x
Output: LBB Output: UBB
begin begin
b  cp; b  cp;
c  cw; c  cw;
for i k C 1 to N do for i k C 1 to N do
xi  1; xi  1;
if Satisfy(x) then if Satisfy(x) then
if c C wi  m then if c C wi  m then
c  c C wi ; c  c C wi ;
b  b  pi ; b  b  pi ;
else else
b  b  .m  c/pi =wi ; xi  0;
ret urn b;
ret urn b;
else
xi  0;

ret urn b;

can be satisfied and the nested if statement satisfies the

constraint (9). Note parts of the components of x can be
the index of the last item and m is the interference thresh- evaluated by tracing the state of E’s ancestor nodes while
old. Satisfy(x) returns the result whether the constraint (11) the rest of them are set to 0 to relax the constraint.

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
Interference-aware spectrum handover
5. SPECTRUM HANDOVER WITH
POWER CONTROL
In our EITM, the SUs have only two choices: stay or
switch. Actually, SUs can avoid the interference to PUs
by appropriately lowering the transmit power. In this part,
we introduce power control into our spectrum handover
scheme. Because each SU is allowed to perform power
control, the problem becomes even more difficult because
of both SUs-to-PU interference constraint and SUs-to-SUs
interference constraint. For convenience, we only consider
the scenario with single SU. In this case, only the interfer-
ence of a single SU to the PU is specified. To the best of
our knowledge, power control has not yet been considered
in the spectrum handover of CR networks.
In the power control-based spectrum handover scheme,
the spectrum handover can be reduced by lowering the
transmit power for continuing transmission if the receiver
is still in the transmission range. Thus, the handover over-
head can be reduced, and the capacity can be improved.
Assume that an SU is using a licensed channel opportunis-
tically; the spectrum handover decision can be obtained by
comparing the physical distance from the SU transmitter to
the receiver with the maximum transmission distance with-
out interfering PU. If the receiver is still covered after low-
ering the transmit power, the SU can continue to transmit;
otherwise, it switches to an idle band.
Now, we consider how to calculate the maximum trans-
mit power that can keep the interference at the nearby PU
below TPU . From Equations (1) and (2), we can get the
transmit power Psu_tx that satisfies the ITM
Psu_tx  Bk.TPU .fc ; B/  TN .fc ; B//=M (14)
where M indicates a multiplicative attenuation due to
fading and path loss between the SU transmitter and
the PR.
There are two possible cases in our scheme. In case one,
the PU is inactive, and the SU can transmit with the power
Pmax to achieve the best signal strength at the receiver,
where Pmax is the allowed maximum transmit power. In
the other case, PU is active, so SU should transmit with the
power constrained by Equation (14). Then, we can get the
transmit power of the SU
8 or lower power. The problem becomes even more difficult
<Pmax PU is inactive;
Psu_tx D Bk.TPU .fc ; B/  TN .fc ; B//
: PU is active:
M ference. Heuristically, we divided the spectrum handover
(15)
From Equation (3), when the SU transmits with power
Pmax , the receiving power Psu_rx is
Pmax (16)
Psu_rx D rn
The secondary sender obtains the receiving power Psu_rx
through exchanging the information with the receiver.
D. Lu et al.
According to Equation (3), the distance from the trans-
mitter to the receiver can be estimated by the following
equation
s
Pmax
n
rD (17)
Psu_rx
To guarantee that the SI NR at the SU receiver is greater
than the minimum SI NR min required for decoding the
signal, Psu_tx should satisfy
Psu_tx
10 lg  min (18)
r n kBTN .fc ; B/
When a PU appears in the licensed band, the maximum
transmission range of the SU transmitter must not exceed
s
Psu_tx
r D n
min (19)
10 10 kBTN .fc ; B/
Finally, we compare r  with r. If r   r, the SU
continues to use the current channel; otherwise, it switches
to another channel. Algorithm 3 shows the pseudo code
of solving the single-SU model. Note that cal_phy_dist./
calculates the physical distance from the transmitter to
the receiver, cal_max_trans_pow./ gets the the maximum
transmit power, cal_max_trans_dist./ calculates the max-
imum transmission range corresponding to the maximum
power. dec_value gives the decision of SU through the
comparison function comp_dist./.
Algorithm 3: Algorithm for the single-SU solution
Input: B; Pmax ; Psu_rx ; ˇ
Output: dec_value
begin
r  cal_phy_dist.Pmax ; Psu_rx /;
Psu_tx  cal_max_trans_pow.B; ˇ/;
r   cal_max_trans_dist.Psu_tx /;
dec_value  comp_dist.r; r  /
In the multi-SU scenario, SUs have two choices: switch
because it is hard to know the exact power under the con-
straints of SUs-to-PU interference and SUs-to-SUs inter-
scheme into two steps: first, we calculate physical distance
of each SU pair. Then, we select the largest distance and
calculate the power that can guarantee the transmission.
This power will be looked as the power level after con-
trol; second, we continue to consider the switch decision
problem which is also a multi-constraint nonlinear 0/1 inte-
ger programming problem similar with the optimization
model mentioned in Section 4.2. Differently, the solution
determines SUs to switch or lower power.
Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
D. Lu et al. Interference-aware spectrum handover

6. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION generality, we assume that the distance between the SU

We consider the wireless microphone as a primary sys-
tem that operates on the channels with the bandwidth
of 200 kHz and the noise floor TN D 300 K. We set
Mi D 16  1012 and Lij varies from 9  1012 to
16  1012 . Firstly, we evaluate the cumulated capacity
and overhead of the EITM-based spectrum handover with-
out considering power control. Then, we provide insight
into the spectrum handover ratio and the effective data rate,
which measure the performance of power control-based
spectrum handover in CR networks.
6.1. Spectrum handover without
power control
6.1.1. Cumulated capacity.
Figure 6(a) and (b) shows the cumulated capacity of
the multi-SU CR network where N D 8. Without loss of
transmitters and receivers are uniformly distributed. We
also assume all the SUs have the same interference thresh-
old TSU . For comparison, we evaluate three approaches:
conservative, random, and our proposed algorithm. In the
conservative algorithm, all SUs lower the transmit power
when the PUs appear. Because the transmission cannot be
guaranteed to succeed after the power falls, the network
performance will degrade. In the random algorithm, SUs
switch to other channels randomly under the constraint of
not interfering with the PU.
In Figure 6(a), we evaluate the system capacity with
respect to SU interference temperature limit TSU , which
varies from 0:5  104 to 3:0  104 K. We set the PU
interference temperature limit TPU D 8  104 K, which
guarantees that all the interference to PU is below the spec-
ified limit. In Figure 6(b), we evaluate the system capacity
with respect to the PU interference temperature limit TPU ,
which varies from 1:5  104 to 4:5  104 K. We also set

(a) Capacity vs. Interference Temperature Limit of SU

(b) Capacity vs. Interference Temperature Limitof PU

Figure 6. Impact of interference temperature limit of secondary user (SU) and primary user (PU).

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
Interference-aware spectrum handover
TSU D 4  104 K where only the interference to PU is
needed to be considered.
Figure 6(a) and (b) show that the capacity rises quickly
as interference temperature threshold increases, although
a smaller threshold leads to significantly reduced capacity.
It means the higher threshold can ensure that more SUs
resume their transmission. Specifically, from Figure 6(a)
and (b), we can see that, as the interference limit rises,
the capacity of conservative algorithm increases firstly,
and then remains unchanged. This is because the trans-
mission cannot be continued because lower power leads
to lower SI NR. It can also be seen that the performance
of all algorithms is comparable firstly. The reason is that
when the limit is low, only few SU can access the licensed
band. Obviously, our method is superior to the others
when the interference temperature limit becomes higher.
Our proposed approach improves the capacity by up to
31% and 74% than random and conservative algorithms
in Figure 6(a). Additionally, we observe the difference
between the two figures. As for all the algorithms, the
capacity in Figure 6(a) is larger than that in Figure 6(b)
at the same point of interference limit. It means that the
interference temperature limit of PU has a greater impact
on that of SU.
6.1.2. Cumulated overhead.
In Figure 7, we compare the spectrum handover over-
head of the three approaches with respect to the number of
SUs. In the aggressive algorithm, all SUs on the licensed
channel switch to other available channels as soon as the
PU appears. Assume that the SU receivers are uniformly
distributed in the coverage of the corresponding SU trans-
mitter, and a handover costs 3:5 ms, we can calculate
the cumulative overhead of all the handovers. As shown
in Figure 7, the overhead of the aggressive algorithm is
larger than others because the handovers lead to longer
latency. Obviously, our approach can drastically reduce the
Figure 7. Cumulative overhead versus number of secondary users.
D. Lu et al.
spectrum handover overhead through optimally handling
the coexistence of PU and SUs.
6.2. Power control-based
spectrum handover
6.2.1. Spectrum handover ratio.
We assume that there is only one SU pair that uses the
same channel with the PU. The arrival process of PUs is
assumed to be Poisson distributed with rate  [21]. Let
pa be the probability that a PU appears during a slot.
Assume that the appearance in each slot is independent.
In the aggressive approach, the SU must perform spectrum
handover once the PU appears. So, we can get the spectrum
handover ratio of the aggressive approach
paggr D P f PU is active g D pa (20)
However, in our proposed approach, spectrum handover
happens only when the maximum transmission distance
without interfering PU is less than the physical distance
from the SU transmitter to the receiver (r  < r). Then, the
ratio of spectrum handover can be expressed as
p D P fr  < r \ PU is active g D P fr  < rg  paggr (21)
In the ‘best’ situation, P fr  < rg D 0, which means
that the spectrum handover ratio p D 0; in the ‘worst’
situation, P fr  < rg D 1, which means that the spectrum
handover ratio p D paggr . Figure 8 shows the performance
gain of the proposed scheme. Assume that the SU receivers
are uniformly distributed in the coverage of the transmitter,
we study the spectrum handover ratio of the conventional
scheme and the scheme with power control. The test is
repeated for 10 000 times. As shown in Figure 8, the aver-
age handover ratio for SUs increases with respect to the
arrival rate of PU. That means spectrum handover happens
Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
D. Lu et al. Interference-aware spectrum handover

0.016
Spectrum handover without power control
0.014 Spectrum handover with power control

Spectrum handover ratio

0.012

0.01

0.008

0.006

0.004

0.002

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Appearance prob. of primary user

Figure 8. Spectrum handover ratio versus arrival rate of primary user.

Figure 9. Effective data rate versus arrival rate of primary user.

more frequently when the arrival rate of PU increases. We introduce the spectrum handover ratio p mentioned
However, our proposed scheme can greatly reduce the earlier, and LMP can be determined by
ratio. We can observe from Figure 8 that our approach
n  
X
reduces the percentage of spectrum handover by up to 33% m
when the PU’s arrival rate reaches 1.0. pm D j p j .1  p/mj (23)
j D0

6.2.2. Effective data rate.
We introduce the definition of link maintenance prob-
ability (LMP) [22] to investigate the effective data rate
of our scheme. LMP is defined as the probability that an
SU finishes its transmission within n handover trials. For
simplicity, we partition the transmission time of both PUs
and SUs into slots. We assume that the transmission of the
SU lasts for m slots; the LMP can be defined as
pm , Prfthe number of handover trials is no more
than nj an m_slot transmissiong
(22)
Denote W as the traffic load of an SU. We define
effective data rate Re as the average number of bits
received per unit time. Then, the Re of the SUs can be
expressed as
W
Re D (24)
TQ
where TQ is the average time of an SU’s transmission with
traffic load W . In addition, the spectrum handover scheme
needs to perform the radio sensing and spectrum handover
for each handover trail. Let Ts be the latency of channel

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
Interference-aware spectrum handover
sensing and spectrum handover. The average transmission
time TQ becomes
n h 
X i
m
TQ D j p j .1  p/mj  j Ts C Td (25)
j D0
where Td D W =rSU , and rSU is the transmission’s rate of
SU. When n D m, pm D 1, it means that the SU can finish
its transmission within n handover trials. In this case, the
transmission time in Equation (25) can be written as
TQ D .mpTs C Td / (26)
In Figure 9, we compare the average effective data rate
of the two schemes with respect to . We set W to 1500 bits
and rSU to 12  106 bit/s. As expected, a smaller  leads to
significantly improved effective data rate because the rate
decreases as  increases. As we can see, the effective data
rate heavily depends on the latency of channel sensing and
spectrum handover. In addition, the effective data rate also
decreases quickly as the latency of channel sensing and
spectrum handover grows. As illustrated in Figure 9, the
effective data rate of our proposed scheme is higher than
the scheme without power control. When the PU arrival
rate is high, our approach improves the effective data rate
by up to 30%. In other words, the proposed scheme is more
effective when the PU appears frequently.
7. CONCLUSION
Spectrum handover is a critical issue in CR networks.
Frequent spectrum handover leads to disruptions of SU’s
transmission. To address this problem, we propose an
interference-aware spectrum handover model. In this
model, we explore the coexistence opportunity of SUs and
PU to maximize the capacity of the licensed channels and
minimize the spectrum switching overhead considering
the accumulated interference at PUs and SUs. We formu-
late the decision of spectrum handover as a constrained
optimization problem and then derive the solution by
employing the technique of LCBB. At last, we extend our
proposed model on the basis of power control. Numerical
results show that our algorithm can improve the network
performance significantly.
In the future work, we would like to extend our work to a
dynamic scenario where the status of PUs (active/inactive)
and the activity of SUs (arrival/departure) should
be considered.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the National High Tech-
nology Research and Development Program of China
(863 program) under grant No. 2011AA010503 and the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under
grant No. 60903192.
D. Lu et al.
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AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Dianjie Lu received the PhD degrees
in 2012 from Shenzhen Institutes of
Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese
Academy of Sciences. He is cur-
rently an assistant professor at School
of Information Science and Engi-
neering, Shandong Normal University,
China. His current research interests
include resource allocation and routing in cognitive
radio networks.
Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm
Interference-aware spectrum handover
Xiaoxia Huang, associate professor,
received the BE and ME degree in
Electrical Engineering from Huazhong
University of Science and Technol-
ogy, China, in 2000 and 2002, respec-
tively. She received her PhD from the
Electrical and Computer Engineering,
State University of Florida in 2007.
She is currently Deputy Director of the Center for Real-
Time Monitoring and Communications Technologies in
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology. Her research
interest includes wireless sensor networks, cognitive radio
networks, wireless communications, and mobile comput-
ing. She has served on technical program committee (TPC)
of IEEE WCNC 2011, ICC 2011, IEEE Globecom 2011,
QShine 2010, International Conference on Embedded and
Ubiquitous Computing 2010. She has served as a reviewer
of many prestigious journals and conferences, for instance,
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Trans-
actions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wire-
less Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular
Technology, ACM Wireless Networks. She has published
20 papers on the top conference and journal of wire-
less networks and communications, with a coauthor of
an academic work. The six patents of wireless net-
works are pending trial. She has served as one of the
key members of the NSFC project, 863 national major
projects, Shenzhen Public projects, national major projects,
Guangdong Province major projects and 973 sub-project
and the National Science Foundation (NSF) projects. She
is one of academic leaders of Shenzhen Key Laboratory of
High Performance Data Mining.
Weile Zhang received the BS degree
in Information Engineering from Xi’an
Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in
2006. From October 2010 to October
2011, he was a visiting scholar at the
Department of Computer Science, Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara,
CA, USA. His research interests include
broadband wireless communications, array signal process-
ing and localization in wireless networks.
Jianping Fan received his BS degree
from Nankai University in 1984, PhD
degree in Institute of Software (IOS),
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
in 1990. He worked at Institute of
Computing Technology from 1990 to
2006, where he served as deputy chief
engineer of national research center for
intelligent computing systems director of National Engi-
neering Center on High Performance Computing, vice
Director of institute of computing technology. Since 2006,
he served as Director of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced
Technology, CAS. Dr. Fan’s research interests include high
performance computing, Grid computing, and computer
Interference-aware spectrum handover
architecture. He took part in and developed Dawning I,
Dawning 1000, Dawning 3000, Dawning 4000, and other
series of Dawning supercomputers. He has published
more than 70 papers and 1 book. He also acquired 11
pending or issued patents. Dr. Fan has received many
awards, such as outstanding award of CAS science and
technology progress, first price of national science and
technology progress-first price of Beijing science and tech-
D. Lu et al.
nology progress, and the outstanding young scientist of
CAS. Dr. Fan has served as editor of journal of com-
puter research and development, joint professor in Nankai
University, council member of china digital library con-
sultant committee, advisor of the 11th five years science
and technology development plan of ministry of informa-
tion industry, and general chair of HPC China 2007 and
GCC 2008.
Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/wcm