Spectrum shaping via network coding in cognitive radio networks

We consider a cognitive radio network where primary users (PUs) employ network coding for data transmissions. We view network coding as a spectrum shaper, in the sense that it increases spectrum availability to secondary users (SUs) and offers more structure of spectrum holes, which in turn improves the predictability of the primary spectrum. With this spectrum shaping effect of network coding, each SU can carry out adaptive channel sensing by dynamically updating the list of the (predicted) idle PU channels and giving priority to these channels for spectrum sensing. This dynamic spectrum access approach with network coding improves how SUs detect and utilize spectrum holes over PU channels. Our results show that compared to the existing approaches based on retransmission, both PUs and SUs can achieve higher stable throughput, thanks to the spectrum shaping effect of network coding.