Seamless real-time content delivery in wireless cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we propose a strategy for individual users to purchase frequency spectrum in cognitive radio based wireless networks. From the user´s perspective, the goal is to reduce the cost of acquiring the spectrum needed to meet the quality of service needs of their real-time streaming applications. The key aspect of our proposed strategy is that the users can purchase spectrum for use in future time instances based on stochastic predictions of their locations and the prices set by competing wireless service providers. Another important aspect of the proposed strategy is that the tuning of many design parameters is not required as the tuning is often needed in conventional schemes. To evaluate our proposed scheme, we model a user utility function based on the cost of spectrum purchase and its impact on the quality of service. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy performs better than baseline schemes in terms of user utility.