Artificial bee colony–based spectrum handoff algorithm in wireless cognitive radio networks

In this work, we proposed a new artificial bee colony–based spectrum handoff algorithm for wireless cognitive radio systems. In our wireless cognitive radio system, primary users, secondary users, and related base stations exist in the same communication environment. For our artificial bee colony–based algorithm, secondary users that always struggle to discover an idle channel have a leading role. While honey bees work hard to find the best‐quality nectar source for foraging, secondary users try to find idle channels for making communication. In this way, secondary users are organized for different missions such as sensing and handoff similar to honey bees to minimize spectrum handoff delay by working together. In the spectrum handoff stage, some secondary users must sense the spectrum so that the interrupted secondary user may perform the spectrum handoff process. In our developed spectrum handoff algorithm, the spectrum availability characteristic is observed on the basis of the missions of the bees in the artificial bee colony algorithm with the aim of minimizing the spectrum handoff delay and maximizing probability of finding an idle channel. With the help of the algorithm that is developed using the artificial bee colony, spectrum handoff delay of secondary users is considerably decreased for different number of users without reducing probability of finding an available channel.