Random access for a cognitive radio transmitter with RF energy harvesting

In this paper, we investigate the random access for an energy harvesting secondary user (SU) in a cognitive radio system, in which the SU harvests energy from radio frequency (RF) radiation of the primary user (PU). With multipacket reception channel model, the SU can increase its throughput through not only utilizing the idle periods of the PU, but also opportunistically sharing the PU spectrum with some probability when the PU is active. By choosing the appropriate random access probability, we maximize the throughput of the SU under the constraint of the primary queue stability. We also define the energy-limited region and spectrum-limited region to specify the tradeoff between the SU performance and the PU activity. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of the primary queueing delay constraint on the throughput performance of the SU.