Abstract

This article studies the discrete-time queuing dynamics of opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) systems, in which the secondary user seeks spectrum vacancies between bursty transmissions of the primary user to communicate. Since spectrum sensing and data transmission can not be performed simultaneously, the secondary user employs a sensing-then-transmission strategy to detect the presence of the primary user before accessing the licensed channel. Consequently, the transmission of the secondary user is periodically suspended for spectrum sensing. To capture the discontinuous transmission nature of the secondary user, we introduce a discrete-time queuing subjected to bursty preemption to describe the behavior of the secondary user. Specifically, we derive some important metrics of the secondary user, including secondary spectrum utilization ratio, buffer length, packet delay and packet dropping ratio. Finally, simulation results validate the proposed theoretical model and reveal that the theoretical results fit the simulated results well.