Energy-Efficient Packet Size Optimization for Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) and its dynamic spectrum access capabilities can be exploited by many wireless network architectures including sensor networks. Thus, cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSN) has emerged as a promising solution to address the spectrum-related challenges of wireless sensor networks (WSN). Among others, determination of the optimal packet size is one of the most fundamental problems to be addressed for the practical realization of CRSN. The existing optimal packet size solutions devised for wireless, sensor, and CR networks are not applicable in CRSN regime. Hence, the objective of this paper is to determine the optimal packet size for CRSN that maximizes energy-efficiency while maintaining acceptable interference level for licensed primary users (PU) and achieving reliable event detection at the sink. The energy-efficient optimal packet size is analytically formulated and its variation with respect to different network parameters is observed. Results reveal that PU behavior and channel BER are the most critical parameters in determining the energy-efficient optimal packet size for CRSN.