  In this research, we proposes a new method for cooperation and underlay mode
selection in cognitive radio networks. We characterize the maximum achievable
throughput of our proposed method of hybrid spectrum sharing. Hybrid spectrum
sharing is assumed where the Secondary User (SU) can access the Primary User
(PU) channel in two modes, underlay mode or cooperative mode with admission
control. In addition to access the channel in the overlay mode, secondary user
is allowed to occupy the channel currently occupied by the primary user but
with small transmission power. Adding the underlay access modes attains more
opportunities to the secondary user to transmit data. It is proposed that the
secondary user can only exploits the underlay access when the channel of the
primary user direct link is good or predicted to be in non-outage state.
Therefore, the secondary user could switch between underlay spectrum sharing
and cooperation with the primary user. Hybrid access is regulated through
monitoring the state of the primary link. By observing the simulation results,
the proposed model attains noticeable improvement in the system performance in
terms of maximum secondary user throughput than the conventional cooperation
and non-cooperation schemes.
