IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO.
2, JUNE 2014
Hybrid Spectrum Access in Cognitive-Radio-Based
Smart-Grid Communications Systems
Rong Yu, Member, IEEE, Chaorui Zhang, Xing Zhang, Member, IEEE,
Liang Zhou, Member, IEEE, and Kun Yang, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Cognitive-radio-based smart-grid networks have
been studied recently as an efficient and reliable communications
infrastructure for the future power grid. In this paper, we con-
sider the spectrum resource management in cognitive-radio-based
smart-grid networks. A new spectrum access paradigm called
hybrid spectrum access (HSA) is proposed, in which both licensed
and unlicensed spectrum bands are intelligently scheduled for
the transmission of smart-grid services. The admission control
problem under HSA is deliberately investigated. Furthermore, the
impact of spectrum sensing error on the performance of HSA is
analyzed by using a multidimensional Markov chain. Regarding
the practical applications of the smart grid, two optimization prob-
lems, namely, cost-driven spectrum leasing and quality of service
(QoS)-driven spectrum management, are formulated. Numeric re-
sults indicate that the HSA strategy is able to significantly improve
the QoS of the smart-grid services, save the cost in spectrum
leasing, and maintain the system interference at a sufficiently low
range.
Index Terms—Cognitive radio, quality of service, smart grid,
spectrum access, spectrum management.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE SMART GRID is the next-generation electricity grid
[1]–[6], which has been envisioned to be integrated
with enabling information technologies including embedded
sensing, wireless communications, pervasive computing, and
adaptive control, so as to significantly improve the efficiency,
Manuscript received April 15, 2012; revised September 26, 2012; accepted
January 23, 2013. Date of publication July 9, 2013; date of current version
May 22, 2014. This work was supported in part by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under Grants 60903170, U0835003, U1035001,
and U1201253; by the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program
of Higher Education under Grant 20090172120010; by the Foundation for
Distinguished Young Talents in Higher Education of Guangdong, China, under
Grant LYM09021; by the Opening Project of the Key Laboratory of Cognitive
Radio and Information Processing (GUET), Ministry of Education, under Grant
2011KF06; by EU FP7 Project EVANS under Grant GA-2010-269323; and by
EU FP7 Project MONICA under Grant GA-2011-295222.
R. Yu is with the Faculty of Automation, Guangdong University of Technol-
ogy, Guangzhou 510006, China (e-mail: yurong@ieee.org).
C. Zhang is with the Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong (e-mail: chaorui.zhang@gmail.
com).
X. Zhang is with Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing 100876, China (e-mail: hsingzhang@bupt.edu.cn; zhangx@ieee.org;
hszhang@bupt.edu.cn).
L. Zhou is with Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Nanjing 210003, China (e-mail: liang.zhou@ieee.org).
K. Yang is with the University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, U.K. (e-mail:
kunyang@essex.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2013.2260931
1932-8184 © 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
577
reliability, resilience, sustainability, security, and stability of the
electrical grid [7]–[9]. An efficient and reliable communication
architecture of the smart grid plays a crucial role in building
up two-way communications between the customers and the
utilities [10]. However, the design of smart-grid communica-
tions networks has considerable challenges. It is reported that
the amount of data generated by smart meters and intelligent
sensors in the smart grid will have an explosive growth in the
next few years [11]. Furthermore, although wireless networking
is definitely a preferred option for the smart grid, the license-
free Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) frequency band
in home areas is becoming dramatically crowded and contam-
inated, while other licensed frequency bands are fixedly as-
signed and utilized in an inefficient way [4]. Due to the unique
challenges imposed on the smart grid, the existing data com-
munication network is not resilient or efficient enough. A revo-
lutionary communication architecture is demanded to utilize all
potential spectrum resources and provide sufficient bandwidth
for the transmissions of large-scale data in the smart grid.
Cognitive radio refers to the potentiality that wireless sys-
tems are context-aware and reconfigurable according to the
surrounding environments and their own properties [12]. In
the same frequency range, there are two coexisting systems:
primary and secondary. Primary system refers to the licensed
system with legacy spectrum. This system has the exclusive
privilege to access the assigned spectrum. Secondary system
refers to the unlicensed cognitive system and can only op-
portunistically access the spectrum holes which are not used
by the primary system. We call the subscriber in the primary
system primary user (PU) and the subscriber in the secondary
system secondary user (SU). The SUs are able to dynamically
access the licensed frequency bands without any modification
to the primary system. The cognitive-radio-based smart-grid
communications networks have been studied and reported in
[13]–[16]. By exploiting all the potential spectrum resources
and improving the spectrum utilization, the cognitive-radio-
based smart-grid communications system is able to provide
sufficient bandwidth to support the large-scale energy-related
data in the smart grid.
In this paper, we are motivated to study the spectrum man-
agement in the cognitive-radio-based smart-grid communica-
tions systems. To enhance the spectrum utilization, a new
spectrum access paradigm called hybrid spectrum access
(HSA) is proposed and the admission control mechanism called
hybrid guard channel (HGC) is designed to support quality
of service (QoS) provisioning to the smart-grid services. In a
cognitive-radio system, spectrum sensing is the key component
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tightly related to the accuracy and efficiency in spectrum op-
portunity discovery. The existence of spectrum sensing error
may partially decrease the spectrum utilization and lead to
severe interference between the primary and smart-grid ser-
vices. Considering this fact, we discuss the spectrum sensing
schemes in HSA and deliberately investigate the impact of
spectrum sensing error on the smart-grid service performance.
The optimization of the system’s parameters are formulated
based on the theoretical analysis.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
introduces the cognitive-radio-based network architecture and
the HSA strategy for the smart grid. Section III describes the
spectrum sensing schemes in HSA and its impact on the system
performance. Section IV provides performance analysis using
a multi-tiered Markov chain. Section V formulates cost-driven
and QoS-driven optimization problems. Section VI presents
the numeric results, and Section VII concludes the work of
this paper.
II. C OGNITIVE R ADIO ACCESS AND
HSA FOR S MART G RID
A. Cognitive-Radio-Based Smart-Grid Networks
The smart grid is usually deployed in a considerably
large geographical field. Accordingly, the communications
infrastructure of the smart grid has to cover the entire region
with the intention to connect a large scale of nodes. As a
consequence, the communication infrastructure is generally
expected to be a multilayered structure that extends across
the smart grid from the home area to the neighborhood and
the wide area [13]. The communications architecture has a
three-tiered hierarchical structure, including cognitive home
area networks (HANs), cognitive neighborhood area networks
(NANs), and cognitive wide area networks (WANs). The HAN
communicates with various smart devices to provide energy
efficiency management and demand response [17]. The NAN
connects multiple HANs to local access points. The WAN
provides transmission links between the NANs and the utility
systems to transfer information.
B. HSA for Smart-Grid Networks
In cognitive-radio-based smart-grid communications net-
works, dynamic spectrum access strategy is applied in the
NANs and WAN. The cognitive HAN and NAN gateways
(HGWs and NGWs, respectively) opportunistically access the
spectrum holes that are unoccupied by the primary systems.
Here, primary systems refer to the TV broadcasting terminals
or the regular cellular devices. Although dynamic spectrum
access significantly improves the spectrum utilization, it fails
to provide hard QoS [18]. In this paper, a new spectrum access
paradigm called HSA is proposed as a promising option to
efficiently balance the spectrum utilization and the QoS pro-
visioning in the smart-grid networks.
In the context of HSA, the smart-grid network operator
should lease a number of spectrum bands from the telecom-
munications operator, while being allowed to use a portion
IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 2, JUNE 2014
of the other spectrum bands in an opportunistic manner. We
adopt the term “hybrid” to indicate that the proposed spectrum
access paradigm is the combination of the dynamic spectrum
access and the traditional fixed spectrum access. Specifically,
the spectrum bands of a NAN are divided into two categories.
Some are leased as licensed bands, while others are unlicensed
bands that could only be accessed when they are unoccupied
by primary systems. The NGW is responsible for scheduling
the spectrum bands to the HGWs within its area. The HGWs
being assigned with licensed bands have hard QoS guarantee
for their smart-grid services. The HGWs being allocated with
unlicensed bands act as SUs which have no hard QoS guarantee.
For instance, an ongoing smart-grid service with unlicensed
channel has to hand off to a spectrum hole once a PU appears
and occupies its channel. If there is no spectrum hole available
for handoff, the smart-grid service will be dropped. In this case,
to improve the QoS of smart-grid services, we propose two
QoS-aware policies for spectrum management in hybrid access
strategy: the HGC mechanism and the fair service handoff rule,
which are explained respectively as follows.
1) HGC: A guard channel is known as a classical and
effective approach to protect the ongoing services and maintain
their QoS at a satisfying level. In the traditional guard channel
strategy, a number of channels are reserved for handoff traffic.
New services are not allowed to use the reserved channels.
In cellular networks, the guard channel has been widely and
successfully applied in various scenarios. In cognitive-radio
networks, the dynamic nature of spectrum availability causes
a significant difficulty in stable and guaranteed QoS provision.
The guard channel has also been validated to significantly re-
duce the dropping probability of spectrum handoff and improve
the spectrum utilization [18].
Considering the unique characteristics in cognitive-radio-
based smart-grid networks, we propose the HGC mechanism.
The key feature of the HGC mechanism is that both the licensed
and unlicensed bands reserve a certain number of channels for
the usage of spectrum handoff. Essentially, there are four types
of channels: the licensed guard channels, the unlicensed guard
channels, the licensed common channels, and the unlicensed
common channels. The licensed guard channels offer guar-
anteed reservation for handoff services, while the unlicensed
guard channels extend the opportunities for handoff services in
a more resilient and efficient manner. The licensed/unlicensed
common channels could be used by both new and handoff
services.
For instance, consider a NAN with a total of N channels.
l u
Let NG , NG , NCl , and NCu denote the numbers of licensed
and unlicensed guard channels and licensed and unlicensed
common channels. In addition, let i and j denote the number
of existing PU and smart-grid NAN services, respectively. The
main operations of the HGC mechanism are summarized as
follows.
1) A new smart-grid service is allowed to access the network
if i + j < NCl + NCu ; otherwise, it should be blocked.
2) The admitted new service is allocated with a licensed
u
common channel if j < NG ; otherwise, it is allocated
with an unlicensed common channel.
YU et al.: HYBRID SPECTRUM ACCESS IN COGNITIVE-RADIO-BASED SMART-GRID COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS
Fig. 1. Illustration of spectrum sensing scheme.
3) The licensed and unlicensed guard channels are only
reserved for the usage of smart-grid services handoff.
However, the licensed and unlicensed common channels
could be used by new and handoff services as well.
2) Fair Services Handoff: In cognitive-radio-based smart-
grid networks, spectrum handoff is crucial to maintain the
continuity and improve the resilience of the smart-grid services.
Upon the PU arrival, a smart-grid service that occupies an
unlicensed channel has to perform spectrum handoff timely to
avoid causing interference. As mentioned earlier, there are two
kinds of guard channels in the HGC mechanism. Apparently,
the licensed guard channels are more desirable for smart-grid
services handoff than the unlicensed guard channels. Here,
a fair spectrum handoff rule is introduced to coordinate the
spectrum handoff and facilitate the spectrum management in
the smart-grid networks. The fair service handoff rule consists
of the following key operations.
1) If there exist idle licensed or unlicensed common chan-
nels, handoff users should shift to the common channels
instead of the guard channels. In addition, the handoff
users should first select the licensed common channels
and then the unlicensed common channels.
2) If there is no common channel available but licensed
guard channel(s), the intuitive but fair approach is to
allocate the licensed guard channels to the handoff users
following the First Come First Served rule.
3) Once there are free licensed or unlicensed common chan-
nels due to the departure of a PU or smart-grid user, one
of the handoff users that are already occupying a guard
channel shall switch back to the common channel. As a
consequence, the guard channel could be recovered for
further usage.
III. S PECTRUM S ENSING AND I TS I MPACT ON HSA
Spectrum sensing is an essential functionality in cognitive-
radio networks [19], [20]. It also plays an important role in
HSA. This section explains the details of the spectrum sensing
scheme and its impact on HSA.
A. Sensing Types
Spectrum sensing is an indispensable component in a
cognitive-radio system. By sampling the channel state, spec-
trum sensing acquires the information of spectrum opportu-
nities. Spectrum sensing has an underlying impact on the
performance of HSA. In the cognitive-radio-based smart-grid
579
network that adopts HSA strategy, we consider two types of
spectrum sensing schemes: periodic and on-demand sensing.
1) Periodic sensing: Periodic sensing is performed period-
ically as a routine action to examine the PU activities.
After periodic sensing, the channel availability will be
updated in the spectrum manager. Meanwhile, if an inter-
ference between the primary system and smart-grid ser-
vices is detected, the spectrum manager will re-allocate
an available channel to the handoff service.
2) On-demand sensing: On-demand sensing is triggered
only upon the arrivals of the smart-grid services to dis-
cover the spectrum opportunities. The spectrum manager
assigns a channel to the new service according to the
result of the on-demand sensing.
Fig. 1 shows an illustration of these two types of spectrum
sensing, where the time-division multiple-access scheme is
considered. A slot is defined as the system’s basic time unit,
whose duration is denoted by Ts .
B. Sensing Techniques
The purposes of the two types of spectrum sensing are
different. Periodic sensing is performed mainly to detect the
occurrence of the PUs, which requires high sensing accuracy
to avoid/reduce interference between the smart grid and the pri-
mary system. On-demand sensing needs to rapidly identify the
available spectrum bands for the new services. Consequently,
we adopt different sensing techniques for these two sensing
types. On-demand sensing uses the fast sensing technique, and
periodic sensing uses the fine sensing technique. Fast sensing
consumes much less sensing time but with moderate sensing ac-
curacy. Fine sensing takes more time but with sufficiently high
sensing accuracy. Let tos and tps denote the sensing times of the
on-demand and periodic sensing, respectively. Typically, tos 
tps . For instance, tos = 1 ms and tps = 25 ms in [21]. Without
loss of generality, we set tps = Ts in this paper. We also assume
that tos is so small to be negligible when calculating the time
cost of spectrum sensing. Let Ns Ts denote the time interval
of the periodic sensing and Ns − 1/Ns represent the efficiency
of the periodic sensing. Apparently, a larger Ns has higher
sensing efficiency but leads to possibly more interference and
vice versa.
C. Sensing Range
As shown in Fig. 1, periodic sensing will check the avail-
ability of all the channels. Although checking all the channels
580
causes some sensing overheads, it has two main advantages.
First, it is able to more effectively discover the coexistence
of smart-grid and PU services to alleviate the interference.
Second, whenever interference is detected, a spectrum handoff
decision can be made immediately since the spectrum man-
ager in the NGW has already obtained the latest state of all
the channels. Note that recent research works have proposed
advanced techniques to improve both the sensing efficiency
and the accuracy [19], [20]. By applying these techniques, it
is practically achievable to sense a wide range of spectrum
within an acceptable delay. Compared with periodic sensing,
on-demand sensing does not sense all the channels. Only the
channels that are not currently assigned for smart-grid services
will be checked. Hence, if there exists interference between the
primary system and the smart-grid services, on-demand sensing
will not discover them.
D. Sensing Error
Since periodic sensing adopts the fine sensing technique
and consumes much more time, the sensing accuracy could
be sufficiently high. For convenience, we ignore the possible
sensing error in the periodic sensing. However, for on-demand
sensing, the fast sensing technique may suffer from sensing
error. When on-demand sensing is performed on a specified
channel, there are several possible results. First, there exists a
PU in the channel and it is successfully detected. This situation
is generally called successful detection and featured by the
probability pd . The second situation is the inverse of the first
one, in which the sensing result fails to report the existence
of a PU. We call this situation misdetection and denote the
corresponding probability by pd , where pd = 1 − pd . Third, the
channel is available for smart-grid services but the sensing re-
sult falsely indicates that it is occupied by a PU. This situation is
generally called false alarm and featured by the corresponding
probability pf . The fourth situation is the inverse of the third
one, in which the sensing result correctly shows that the channel
is unoccupied. The corresponding probability is denoted by
pf with pf = 1 − pf . When multiple channels are diagnosed
in on-demand sensing, we assume that only one channel may
suffer from either misdetection or false alarm. This is justified
by the following fact. By using the recently proposed advanced
sensing techniques [19], [20], the sensing accuracy could be
satisfyingly high, e.g., pd > 0.95 and pf < 0.05. Accordingly,
the probability that multiple sensing errors happen in the same
on-demand sensing is considerably low, e.g., on the order of
magnitude of 10−3 .
IV. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS
A. System Model and Denotations
1) Network Architecture: As shown in Fig. 2, let us consider
a cognitive NAN in the smart grid. There exist a cognitive NGW
and multiple HGWs. The HGWs collect energy consumption
information from households and communicate with the NGW.
The NGW contains two main components: the access point and
the spectrum manager. The access point receives or delivers
IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 2, JUNE 2014
Fig. 2. Architecture of a cognitive NAN.
energy-related data flow, while the spectrum manager serves as
a scheduler to allocate spectrum opportunities to the HGWs.
The HSA strategy is applied. In particular, there are two
classes of wireless channels (or spectrum bands): the licensed
and unlicensed channels. The total channel number is N , where
there are N l licensed channels and N u unlicensed channels,
i.e., N l + N u = N . The NGW will assign NCl common chan-
nels and NG l
guard channels from the licensed channels and NCu
common channels and NG u
guard channels from the unlicensed
channels, according to the predefined HSA strategy. Channels
are exclusively utilized, which means that a channel is allowed
to be occupied at most by one service (either the primary system
or the smart grid) in a slot. Otherwise, interference is caused.
When a new smart-grid service arrives or a handoff service
is requested, the spectrum manager will assign a new wireless
channel to the smart-grid service according to the HSA strategy.
If there is no available wireless channel, the new service will be
blocked while the handoff service has to be dropped.
2) Traffic Model: The activities of the smart-grid and PU
services are closely related to the system performance. Their
traffic models should be investigated before the performance
analysis and optimization. Here, we suppose that both the PU
and smart-grid service activities can be modeled as exponen-
tially distributed inter-arrivals. Following this model, the traffic
flows can be characterized by a two-state birth–death process
with birth rate λp for the PU services and λs for the smart-
grid services and death rate μp for the PU services and μs
for the smart-grid services. The states of ON (busy) and OFF
(idle) represent the occupied and unoccupied periods by PU
services, respectively. Since service arrivals are independent,
each transition follows the Poisson arrival process. Hence, the
length of ON and OFF periods are exponentially distributed.
This model of PU and smart-grid service activities is broadly
used in a previous work in the research area [22], [23].
3) Channel-State Classification: In the HSA strategy, a
channel has several states. It may be free, occupied by either
a PU service or a smart-grid service, or simultaneously used by
a PU service and a smart-grid service (leading to interference).
For presentation, we classify the channels according to their
states as follows.
1) PU channel: If a channel is used by a PU service, it is
called a PU channel.
2) SG channel: If a channel is used by a smart-grid service,
it is called an SG channel.
YU et al.: HYBRID SPECTRUM ACCESS IN COGNITIVE-RADIO-BASED SMART-GRID COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS 581

3) Interfered channel: If a channel is used by a PU service TABLE I

PARAMETER D EFINITIONS
and a smart-grid service at the same time, it is called an
interfered channel.
4) Noninterfered PU channel: If a channel is used and only
used by a PU service, it is called a noninterfered PU
channel.
5) Noninterfered SG channel: If a channel is used and only
used by a smart-grid service, it is called an noninterfered
SU channel.
6) Available channel: If a channel is not occupied by any
service (PU or smart-grid service), it is called an available
channel.
7) Misdetection channel: If a PU channel is misdiagnosed
as an available channel by the smart-grid network after
spectrum sensing, it is called a misdetection channel.
8) False-alarm channel: If an available channel is misdiag-
nosed as a PU channel by the smart-grid network after
spectrum sensing, it is called a false-alarm channel.
9) New interfered channel: If a new smart-grid service or a
handoff service is assigned with a PU channel, new inter-
ference is caused. The channel is called a new interfered
channel.
For later analysis, the denotation of main parameters in this
paper are listed in Table I.

B. System-State Transition Diagram

We adopt the parametric set (i, j, k, t) to characterize the
system state, where i, j, and k are the numbers of PU, SG, and
interfered channels, respectively, and t denotes the sequence
number of a slot in one period of the periodic sensing. Here, t =
1, 2, . . . , Ns − 1 represent the regular slots one by one before
the periodic sensing and t = Ns represents the slot of periodic
sensing. After the slot t = Ns , t is reset to 1 as a new period be-
gins. The system-state space Ω = {(i, j, k, t)|0 ≤ i ≤ N, 0 ≤
j ≤ N, 0 ≤ k ≤ N, 1 ≤ t ≤ Ns } is an (N + 1) × (N + 1) ×
(N + 1) × Ns multidimensional discrete space. In principle,
multiple events (services arrivals or departures) may happen in
one slot. For instance, the probability that there are n arrivals
of primary services is given by e−λp Ts (λp Ts )n /n!. We observe
that the probability of one single arrival is 2.5 × 10−4 and that
of two arrivals is 3 × 10−8 for typical values of λp = 0.01
and Ts = 25 ms. This observation indicates that the probability
that multiple events (more than one) happen in the same slot
is sufficiently small and ignorable. For this reason, we only
consider one event in one slot at the most in the later analysis.
Concretely, either one primary service arrives or departs or one
smart-grid service arrives or departs in one slot. In addition, for
ease of presentation, we simply denote the events’ probabilities
by their corresponding probabilistic rate in the analysis later,
i.e., λp , μp , λs , and μs for the probabilities that one primary
service arrives, one primary service departs, one smart-grid
service arrives, and one smart-grid service departs, respectively.
The system state transits as time goes on. Considering a
different slot number t, the system transition process could be
concretely described by a multi-tiered Markov chain. Fig. 3
illustrates the system transition process in the case where N =
3 and Ns = 4. In the figure, the state transition process for t = 4
is different from that for t = 1, 2, and 3 since periodic sensing
is performed. Some typical state transitions are marked in Fig. 3
and will be explained later in Table II.
The system will transit to different states due to different
events. We classify the events that trigger the transitions of
system states into the following four categories:
1) PU service arrivals and departures;
2) smart-grid service departures;
3) on-demand sensing upon smart-grid service arrivals;
4) periodic sensing.
In these events, each of the first two categories could only
change the availability of one channel at most. The correspond-
ing state transition is easy to understand. As spectrum sensing
is involved for the last two classes of events, multiple smart-
grid services may be simultaneously forced to performance
spectrum handoff according to the sensing results. Considering
the possibility of sensing error (e.g., misdetection and false
alarm) in the on-demand sensing, these state transitions are
considerably complicated.
Regarding a general state (i, j, k, t), the state transition
diagram is shown in Fig. 4, which contains two subfigures.
Fig. 4(a) describes the state transition in the cases of t =
1, 2, . . . , Ns − 1, and Fig. 4(b) describes the case of t = Ns . In
(i ,j  ,k ,t )
Fig. 4, the state transition probability is denoted by Υ(i,j,k,t) ,
where (i , j  , k  , t ) is the next state of (i, j, k, t). The events
that trigger the state transitions corresponding to the branches
of Fig. 4 are explained in detail in Table II.
582 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 2, JUNE 2014

Fig. 3. Illustration of state transition process in the case where N = 3 and Ns = 4.

TABLE II
S TATE T RANSITIONS AND R ELEVANT E VENTS
YU et al.: HYBRID SPECTRUM ACCESS IN COGNITIVE-RADIO-BASED SMART-GRID COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS 583

Fig. 4. State transition diagram for a general state (i, j, k, t). (a) t = 1, 2, . . . , Ns − 1. (b) t = Ns .

C. State Transition Probability Analysis (i ,j  ,k ,t ) (i ,j  ,k ,t )
I(i,j,k,t) = 1; otherwise, I(i,j,k,t) = 0. We define B as the
(i ,j  ,k ,t ) general transition probability matrix. The elements of B are
The state transition probability Υ(i,j,k,t) in Fig. 4 should
be obtained before the balance equations of the multidimen- defined on the space of Ω × Ω, which is given by
sional Markov chain are established. To derive the state transi- (i ,j  ,k ,t ) (i ,j  ,k ,t ) (i ,j  ,k ,t )
tion probability, we should analyze all the possibilities of state B(i,j,k,t) = γ(i,j,k,t) I(i,j,k,t) . (1)
transitions under the aforementioned four categories of events.
For the events of PU service arrivals and departures and smart- Let P (i, j, k, t) represent the steady-state probability of state
grid service departures, the probability of event occurrence can (i, j, k, t) and P the corresponding steady-state probability
be easily obtained by the corresponding arrival or departure vector. For each state, a balance equation could be written
probability, i.e., λp , μp , or μs . However, the different values according to Fig. 4. By combining the balance equations of all
of i, j, and k in (i, j, k, t) may lead to different state transitions. the system states, we have the following equation group:
For example, in the case where j ≤ NCl , all the smart-grid 
PB
 =0
services are operating in the licensed common channels. If a PU P (i, j, k, t) = 1. (2)
(i,j,k,t)∈Ω
service arrives, no interference will be caused. In the case where
NCl < j ≤ NCl + NCu , there are j − NCl smart-grid services The second line of (2) is an additional constraint to the steady-
working in the unlicensed common channels. If a PU service state probability. We solve the aforementioned equations and
comes to one of these channels, a new interference will be obtain the steady-state probability distribution P (i, j, k, t). Af-
caused. For the events of on-demand sensing (upon smart-grid ter that, the blocking probability PB and the dropping proba-
service arrivals) and periodic sensing, the state transitions could bility PD could be derived. The interference probability of the
be considerably complicated due to the possibility of sensing system, denoted by PI , can also be derived
error and spectrum handoff.  
The state transition probability related to a general state PB = P (i,j,k,t)λs + P (i,j,k,t)λs pf (3)
(i, j, k, t) is presented in Table III. The state transition cases (i,j,k,t)∈Ω1 (i,j,k,t)∈Ω2
in Table III follow those in Table II.  
PD = P (i,j,k,t)+ P (i,j,k,t)λp (4)
(i,j,k,t)∈Ω3 (i,j,k,t)∈Ω4
D. Blocking and Dropping Probabilities 
PI = P (i,j,k,t) (5)
The blocking and dropping probabilities are used to evaluate
k>0
the performance of HSA. The blocking probability, denoted by
PB , is defined as the probability that a new smart-grid service where Ω1 denotes the set of states where i + j ≥ N , Ω2 the set
is denied, while the dropping probability, denoted by PD , is of states where i + j = N − 1 and t = Ns , Ω3 the set of states
defined as the probability that a handoff service is dropped. where i + j > N and t = Ns , and Ω4 the set of states where
These two probabilities potentially reflect the efficiency of i + j = N and t = Ns .
spectrum utilization and the reliability of the ongoing services
of the smart-grid communications networks, respectively.
(i ,j  ,k ,t ) V. P ERFORMANCE O PTIMIZATION
For presentation, let I(i,j,k,t) denote the identity function
of the state transition from (i, j, k, t) to (i , j  , k  , t ). If the In Section IV, the performance of HSA in smart-grid com-
state transition from (i, j, k, t) to (i , j  , k  , t ) possibly exists, munications networks has been analyzed in terms of blocking
584 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 2, JUNE 2014

TABLE III
S TATE T RANSITION P ROBABILITY A NALYSIS

A. Cost-Driven Spectrum Leasing Problem

and dropping probabilities. Provided that the total channel
number is N and the licensed and unlicensed channel numbers
are N l and N u , the blocking and dropping probabilities PB
and PD could be derived according to the predefined number
of common and guard channels, i.e., NCl , NG l
, NCu , and NG
u
. more interest in minimizing the cost with QoS constraints with
For operating and managing a smart-grid network, the smart-
grid operator has to optimize the spectrum access strategy with
diverse optimization objectives and is subject to some practical
constraints. In this paper, we consider the cost- and QoS-driven
cases separately and formulate the optimization problems in the
following.
For a smart-grid operator, it may have limited budget in
leasing a spectrum from the primary system, e.g. telecommu-
nication operators. In this case, the smart-grid operator has
respect to blocking and dropping probabilities. In particular,
considering a cognitive NAN, the NGW is responsible for coor-
dinating the licensed and unlicensed spectrum access, dynam-
ically adapting the licensed and unlicensed guard channel as
well as the spectrum handoff such that the HSA strategy works
in a low-cost and highly efficient way. The NGW manages
YU et al.: HYBRID SPECTRUM ACCESS IN COGNITIVE-RADIO-BASED SMART-GRID COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS
the NAN to comprise the system performance with the spec-
trum leasing cost. Let PB0 and PD 0
denote the thresholds of
the blocking and dropping probabilities, respectively. The cost-
driven spectrum leasing problem that aims at minimizing the
number of leased channels is formulated as
min N l
l u
s.t. NG + NG + NCl + NCu = N
PB ≤ P B
0
PD ≤ PD0
PI ≤ PI .
0
(6)
It is noteworthy that both PB and PD are monotone (either
l u
increasingly or decreasingly) functions of parameters NG , NG ,
NCl , and NCu . The discrete gradient descent algorithm could be
employed to search for the optimal solution of problem (6).
B. QoS-Driven Spectrum Management Problem
In the other case, a smart-grid operator may emphasize the
QoS of the communications network in order to attract new
customers and retain existing customers. QoS-driven spectrum
management is also important to deliver real-time data in criti-
cal application situations. Providing a satisfying QoS is highly
desired in this case. The smart-grid operator should consider the
policy to reduce the blocking or dropping probability as much
as possible. Concretely, given the number of leased channels
N l and the constraint on blocking probability, the NGW should
address the following QoS-driven spectrum management opti-
mization problem to reduce the dropping probability:
min PD
l
s.t. NG + NCl = N l
l u
NG + NG + NCl + NCu = N
PB ≤ PB 0 channels to support the QoS.
PI ≤ PI0 . (7)
Similar to those in problem (6), both PB and PD are monotone
(either increasingly or decreasingly) functions of parameters
NGl
, NGu
, NCl , and NCu . The discrete gradient descent algorithm
could be employed to search for the solution of problem (7).
VI. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
In this section, we evaluate the performance of the proposed
HSA strategy in cognitive-radio-based smart-grid communi-
cations networks. The smart-grid operator may lease some
channels and be allowed to opportunistically access the others.
The system parameters are predefined as total channel number
N = 10. The traffic of the primary and smart-grid networks
are assumed to follow the Poisson model. The parameters are
set as primary service load λp = 0.005 and μp = 0.010 and
smart-grid service load λs = 0.001 to 0.008 and μs = 0.10.
For on-demand sensing, successful detection probability is set
as pd = 0.95 and the false-alarm probability is pf = 0.05. We
evaluate the performance of the smart-grid network under the
following four different scenarios.
The first scenario investigates the cost of channel leasing
for smart-grid operators when the HSA strategy is applied.
585
Fig. 5. Dropping probability under different smart-grid service loads.
Under different smart-grid service loads, to satisfy the QoS
constraints, i.e., blocking and dropping probabilities, the smart-
grid operator has to lease a number of licensed channels for
the telecommunications company. In particular, given a traffic
load, the smart-grid operator will find out the optimal parameter
settings of NCl , NG l
, NCu , and NG
u
and the sensing period Ns to
minimize the cost of channel leasing as described in problem
(6). In the simulation, we consider the cases where PD 0
= 10−10
and 10−11 . The constraint on blocking probability is set to
PB0 = 10−5 , and the constraint on interference probability is
PI0 = 10−3 . As shown in Fig. 5, for a light smart-grid load
such as λs = 0.001, only two licensed channels are enough to
provide the demanded QoS. However, for a heavy smart load
such as λs = 0.008, the smart-grid operator has to lease five
In the second scenario, the system’s QoS performance (in
terms of dropping probability) is evaluated under different
smart-grid services. Given the number of licensed channels N l ,
the hybrid access strategy will optimize the parameters of NCl ,
l
NG , NCu , and NGu
and the sensing period Ns . According to an
allowed blocking probability, the optimal dropping probability
will be obtained by solving problem (6). In the simulation, we
consider the cases where N l = 3 and 4 and set PB0 = 10−5 and
PI0 = 10−3 . As shown in Fig. 6, we observe that the dropping
probability stays at a satisfyingly low range, about 10−10 even
in the heavy load case where λs = 0.008. The dropping prob-
ability under N l = 4 is nearly one order of magnitude lower
than that under N l = 3.
In the third scenario, we track the interference caused by
using HSA in the cognitive-radio-based smart-grid networks.
In cognitive-radio-based smart-grid networks, the performance
will be significantly improved by allowing smart-grid services
to opportunistically work in licensed channels unoccupied by
primary services. However, interference caused by cognitive
smart-grid service must be strictly controlled under a consider-
ably low level to maintain the performance of primary services.
For HSA, the sensing period Ns potentially connects to the
system’s interference. In the simulation, we set Ns = 5 and plot
the interference probability under different smart-grid traffic
586
Fig. 6. Minimal number of licensed channels under different smart-grid
service loads.
Fig. 7. Interference probability under different smart-grid service loads.
loads. It is observed from Fig. 7 that, for N l = 3 and 4, the
system interference probability is maintained at a sufficiently
low range from 10−6 to 10−3 . This fact indicates that the
cognitive-radio-based smart grid could significantly improve
the spectrum utilization while keeping the primary services safe
from interference.
The fourth scenario compares the performance of the HSA
strategy with that of the traditional fixed spectrum access in the
smart grid. To investigate the system capability in smart-grid
services, we adopt the blocking probability as the performance
metric. Considering this point, the dual problem of (7) could
be formulated to minimize the PB with constraints on PD and
PI . In the simulation, we consider the cases where N l = 5.
The constraint on dropping probability is set to PD 0
= 10−12 ,
and the constraint on interference probability is PI = 10−3 .
0
From Fig. 8, we observe that HSA apparently outperforms
the traditional fixed spectrum access by significantly reducing
the blocking probability. When the smart-grid service load is
heavy, for example, λs = 0.008, the traditional solution could
IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 2, JUNE 2014
Fig. 8. Performance comparison in blocking probability between the tradi-
tional fixed spectrum access and the HSA strategies.
not afford the traffic load and the blocking probability is almost
10−5 . The HSA reduces the blocking rate by about one order of
magnitude.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have proposed the HSA strategy in
cognitive-radio-based communications networks for the smart
grid. The performance analysis of HSA under error-prone spec-
trum sensing is provided, in which a multi-tiered Markov chain
is used to feature the system-state transition. Cost- and QoS-
driven optimization problems are respectively defined for dif-
ferent smart-grid application demands. Simulation experiments
are carried to evaluate the hybrid access strategy. The numerical
results indicate that the proposed strategy is able to significantly
improve the QoS of the smart-grid services and reduce the spec-
trum leasing cost for the smart-grid operators. The interference
between primary and smart-grid services could be controlled to
a considerably low level.
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Rong Yu (S’05–M’08) received the Ph.D. degree
from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2007.
After that, he was with the School of Electronic
and Information Engineering, South China Univer-
sity of Technology, Guangzhou, China. In 2010,
he joined the Institute of Intelligent Information
Processing, Guangdong University of Technology,
Guangzhou, where he is now an Associate Professor.
His research interest mainly focuses on wireless
communications and networking, including cogni-
tive radio, wireless sensor networks, and home net-
working. He is currently the Deputy Secretary General of the Internet of
Things (IoT) Industry Alliance, Guangdong, and the Deputy Head of the IoT
Engineering Center, Guangdong.
587
Chaorui Zhang received the B.Eng. degree from
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou,
China, in 2012. He is currently working toward
the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Information
Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Shatin, Hong Kong.
His research interests include smart-grid commu-
nications, microgrid system reliability, and cognitive
radio.
Xing Zhang (M’10) received the B.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in electronic engineering (both with high-
est honors) from Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing, China, in
2002 and 2007, respectively.
Since July 2007, he has been with the School
of Information and Communications Engineering,
BUPT, where he is currently an Associate Professor.
His research interests are in green communications
and energy-efficient design, heterogeneous wireless
networks, cognitive radio and cooperative commu-
nications, traffic modeling, and network optimization. Since 2006, he has
published 6 books and more than 50 papers. He served as TPC members for
a number of major international conferences, including the IEEE International
Conference on Communications, Globecom, and Wireless Communications
and Networking Conference.
Liang Zhou (M’09) received the Ph.D. degree
in electronic engineering from École Normale
Supérieure, Cachan, France, and Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai, China, in March 2009.
From 2009 to 2010, he was a Postdoctoral Re-
searcher with École Nationale Supérieure de Tech-
niques Avancées, ParisTech, Paris, France. From
2010 to 2011, he was a Humboldt Research Fellow
with the Technical University of Munich, Munich,
Germany. Currently, he is a Professor with Nanjing
University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Nanjing, China. His research interests are in the area of multimedia communi-
cations and networks.
Kun Yang (SM’09) received the Ph.D. degree from
the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engi-
neering, University College London, London, U.K.
He is currently a Full Professor with the School
of Computer Science and Electronic Engineer-
ing, University of Essex, Colchester, U.K., and
the Head of the Network Convergence Laboratory.
His main research interests include wireless net-
works/communications, fixed mobile convergence,
pervasive service engineering, future Internet tech-
nology, and network virtualization. He has published
150+ papers in the aforementioned research areas. He serves on the editorial
boards of both IEEE and non-IEEE journals. He is a Fellow of the Institution
of Engineering and Technology.