Two-dimensional POMDP-based opportunistic spectrum access in time-varying environment with fading channels

In this research, we study the problem of opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) in a time-varying environment with fading channels, where the channel state is characterized by both channel quality and the occupancy of primary users (PUs). First, a finite-state Markov channel model is introduced to represent a fading channel. Second, by probing channel quality and exploring the activities of PUs jointly, a two-dimensional partially observable Markov decision process framework is proposed for OSA. In addition, a greedy strategy is designed, where a secondary user selects a channel that has the best-expected data transmission rate to maximize the instantaneous reward in the current slot. Compared with the optimal strategy that considers future reward, the greedy strategy brings low complexity and relatively ideal performance. Meanwhile, the spectrum sensing error that causes the collision between a PU and a secondary user (SU) is also discussed. Furthermore, we analyze the multiuser situation in which the proposed single-user strategy is adopted by every SU compared with the previous one. By observing the simulation results, the proposed strategy attains a larger throughput than the previous works under various parameter configurations.