Abstract

and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis, and except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatever without the author’s prior written permission. High transmission rates will be demanded in future wireless communication networks. However, we will soon experience a spectrum scarcity problem since almost all available spectrum has been allocated to various wireless applications. A promising solution to this problem is to significantly improve the spectrum utilization efficiency by using opportunis-tic channel access (OCA). In the literature, OCA approaches have been developed in two kinds of networks: cognitive radio networks (CRNs) (in which secondary users, which are unlicensed users, may access the spectrum when primary users, which are licensed users, are not active) and wireless networks exploiting time diversity (in which a user may give