Performance of channel bonding for opportunistic spectrum access networks

In this paper we propose an analytical framework which allows the investigation of the average channel throughput at the medium access control (MAC) layer for opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) networks with channel bonding enabled. We show that channel bonding is beneficial in certain cases only (e.g. low primary user traffic), though the extent of the benefit depend on the features of the OSA network including secondary network size and the total number of channels available for bonding.