Enhancing Spectrum Utilization in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Reinforcement Learning with Snake Optimizer: A Meta-Heuristic Approach

The rapid development of sixth-generation mobile communication systems has brought about significant advancements in both Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for users, largely due to the extremely high data rates and a diverse range of service offerings. However, these advancements have also introduced challenges, especially concerning the growing demand for a wireless spectrum and the limited availability of resources. Various efforts have been made and research has attempted to tackle this issue such as the use of Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), which allows opportunistic spectrum access and intelligent resource management. This work demonstrate a new method in the optimization of allocation resource in CRNs based on the Snake Optimizer (SO) along with reinforcement learning (RL), which is an effective meta-heuristic algorithm that simulates snake cloning behavior. SO is tested over three different scenarios with varying numbers of secondary users (SUs), primary users (PUs), and frequency bands available. The obtained results reveal that the proposed approach is able to largely satisfy the aforementioned requirements and ensures high spectrum utilization efficiency and low collision rates, which eventually lead to the maximum possible spectral capacity. The study also demonstrates that SO is versatile and resilient and thus indicates its capability of serving as an effective method for augmenting resource management in next-generation wireless communication systems.