Energy-Arrival-Aware Detection Threshold in Wireless-Powered Cognitive Radio Networks

Traffic patterns associated with different primary user (PU) channels may provide different spectral access and energy harvesting opportunities in wireless-powered cognitive radio networks (WP-CRNs). Considering this, we propose traffic-specific optimal spectrum sensing policy such that the expected transmission rate of secondary user (SU) is maximized under the energy causality and PU collision constraints in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA)-based WP-CRN. Toward this, we cluster N subcarriers (subchannels) into K clusters (where K = N) and derive an optimal energy detection threshold for the SU under each traffic pattern. Using traffic features, we propose an unsupervised and nonparametric classification technique to determine the number of unique traffic patternsK over all subchannels. Then, the traffic patterns are used to predict the idle/busy period statistics for subchannels, based upon which SU identifies harvest and transmit PU subchannels for energy harvesting and data transmission, respectively. We derive an optimal detection threshold based on the harvested energy such that it maximizes the expected transmission rate of SU while protecting PU from collision. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in terms of rate gains under design constraints and show the optimal detection threshold under various energy arrival rates.