CATECAS: a content-aware transmission efficiency based channel allocation scheme for cognitive radio users with improved QoE

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology for the upcoming 5G communication which addresses opportunistic channel usage for enhanced spectrum utilization. However, Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning is a major challenge for CR Network due to the service interruption and packet error caused by random primary activities. In addition to this, periodic spectrum sensing for primary user protection reduces the effective throughput of the secondary users (SUs). However, to ensure QoS of SUs especially for video application, throughput enhancement is necessary which can be achieved by efficient spectrum sensing and channel allocation policy. As the QoS requirements are different for different secondary applications, we propose a novel content aware channel allocation scheme that enhances the Quality of Experience (QoE) of SUs. At first, the proposed scheme analyzes the QoS requirements of different SUs and prioritizes them. Consequently, the optimum sensing duration is determined to maximize the transmission efficiency and throughput of SUs. Finally, a novel content aware transmission efficiency-based channel assignment scheme (CATECAS) is proposed for SUs, considering the estimated channel quality and QoS requirements concurrently. Extensive performance analysis of CATESCAS on real-time video and file download applications confirms significant QoE improvement for SUs especially for rapid movement type of video application, which is considered as the most critical among different secondary applications.