Secondary Users (SUs) are allowed to use the temporarily unused licensed spectrum without disturbing Primary Users (PUs) in Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks (CRAHNs). Existing architectures for CRAHNs impose energy-consuming Cognitive Radios (CRs) on SUs. However, the advanced CRs will increase energy cost for their cognitive functionalities, which is undesirable for the battery powered devices. A new architecture referred to as spectral Requirement-based CRAHN (RCRAHN) is proposed to enhance energy efficiency for CRAHNs in this paper. In RCRAHNs, only parts of SUs are equipped with CRs. SUs equipped with CRs are referred to as Cognitive Radio Users (CRUs). To further enhance energy efficiency of CRAHNs, we aim to select minimum CRUs to sense available spectrum. A non-linear programming problem is mathematically formulated under the constraints of energy efficiency and real-time. Considering the NP-hardness of the problem, a framework of a heuristic algorithm referred to as Sensitive Secondary Users Selection (SSUS) was designed to compute the near-optimal solutions. The simulation results demonstrate that SSUS not only improves the energy efficiency, but also achieves satisfied performances in end-to-end delay and communication reliability.

Spread Spectrum (SPSP) Communication is the theoretical basis of Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) transceiver technology. Spreading code, modulation, demodulation, carrier synchronization and code synchronization in SPSP communications are the core parts of DSSS transceivers. This paper focuses on the code synchronization problem in SPSP communications. A novel code synchronization algorithm based on segment correlation is proposed. The proposed algorithm can effectively deal with the informational misjudgment caused by the unreasonable data acquisition times. This misjudgment may lead to an inability of DSSS receivers to restore transmitted signals. Simulation results show the feasibility of a DSSS transceiver design based on the proposed code synchronization algorithm. Finally, the communication functions of the DSSS transceiver based on the proposed code synchronization algorithm are implemented on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).