We investigate a cognitive radio system with two secondary users who can cooperate with the primary user in relaying its packets to the primary receiver. In addition to its own queue, each secondary user has a queue to keep the primary packets that are not received correctly by the primary receiver. The secondary users accept the unreceived primary packets with a certain probability and transmit randomly from either of their queues if both are nonempty. These probabilities are optimized to expand the maximum stable throughput region of the system. Moreover, we suggest a secondary multiple access scheme in which one secondary user senses the channel for $��$ seconds from the beginning of the time slot and transmits if the channel is found to be free. The other secondary user senses the channel over the period $[0,2��]$ to detect the possible activity of the primary user and the first-ranked secondary user. It transmits, if possible, starting after $2��$ seconds from the beginning of the time slot. It compensates for the delayed transmission by increasing its transmission rate so that it still transmits one packet during the time slot. We show the potential advantage of this ordered system over the conventional random access system. We also show the benefit of cooperation in enhancing the network's throughput.

in Globecom 2012