Strategic spectrum occupancy for secondary users in cognitive radio networks with retrials

This article investigates joining strategies and admission control policy for secondary users (SUs) with retrial behavior in a cognitive radio (CR) system where a single primary user (PU) coexists with multiple SUs. Under a certain reward‐cost structure, SUs opportunistically access the PU band when it is not occupied by the PU. If the band is available upon arrival, an SU decides with a probability either to use the band immediately or to balk the system. If the band is occupied, the SU must decide whether to enter the system as a retrial customer or to leave the system. Once the PU requests for service, the service of SU being served, if any, will be interrupted, and the interrupted SU leaves the band and retries for service after a random amount of time. In this article, we study the equilibrium behavior of non‐cooperative SUs who want to maximize their benefit in a selfish, distributed manner with delay‐sensitive utility function. The socially optimal strategies of SUs are also derived. To utilize the PU band more efficiently and rationally, an admission control policy is proposed to regulate SUs who enter the system in order to eliminate the gap between the individually and socially optimal strategies.