Capacity considerations for uncoordinated communication in geographical spectrum holes

Cognitive radio is a new concept of reusing licensed spectrum in an unlicensed manner. The motivation for cognitive radio is various measurements of spectrum utilization, that generally show unused resources in frequency, time and space. These ”spectrum holes” could be exploited by cognitive radios. Some studies suggest that the spectrum is extremely underutilized, and that these spectrum holes could provide ten times the capacity of all existing wireless devices together. The spectrum could be reused either during time periods where the primary system is not active, or in geographical positions where the primary system is not operating. In this paper, we deal primarily with the concept of geographical reuse, in a frequency-planned primary network. We perform an analysis of the potential for communication in a geographical spectrum hole, and in particular the achievable sum-rate for a secondary network, to some order of magnitude. Simulation results show that a substantial sum-rate could be achieved if the secondary users communicate over small distances. For a small number of secondary links, the sum-rate increases linearly with the number of links. However, the spectrum hole gets saturated quite fast, due to interference caused by the secondary users. A spectrum hole may look large, but it disappears as soon as someone starts using it.