1

Utility Maximizing Sequential Sensing
Over a Finite Horizon

arXiv:1705.05960v1 [] 17 May 2017

Lorenzo Ferrari, Qing Zhao, and Anna Scaglione

Abstract—We consider the problem of optimally utilizing N
resources, each in an unknown binary state. The state of each
resource can be inferred from state-dependent noisy measurements. Depending on its state, utilizing a resource results in
either a reward or a penalty per unit time. The objective is
a sequential strategy governing the decision of sensing and
exploitation at each time to maximize the expected utility (i.e.,
total reward minus total penalty and sensing cost) over a finite
horizon L. We formulate the problem as a Partially Observable
Markov Decision Process (POMDP) and show that the optimal
strategy is based on two time-varying thresholds for each resource
and an optimal selection rule for which resource to sense.
Since a full characterization of the optimal strategy is generally
intractable, we develop a low-complexity policy that is shown
by simulations to offer near optimal performance. This problem
finds applications in opportunistic spectrum access, marketing
strategies and other sequential resource allocation problems.
Index Terms—Optimum sequential testing, opportunistic spectrum access, multi-channel sensing, cognitive radio.

I. I NTRODUCTION
We consider the problem of optimally utilizing N resources
over a horizon of length L. The state of each resource is
either 0 (“good”) or 1 (“bad”) and is unknown a priori.
Utilizing resource i results in either a reward ri or a penalty
ρi per unit time, depending on its state. To infer the states
of the resources, only one of them can be sensed at each
given time, accruing a random measurement drawn from a
distribution determined by the state of the chosen resource. We
study the optimal sequential strategy governing the decision
of sensing and exploitation at each time, that maximizes the
expected utility (i.e., total reward minus total penalty) over
the finite horizon. Since sensing reduces the available time
for utilization, the essence of the problem is in balancing the
overhead associated with sensing and the penalty of utilizing
resources in a bad state. Due to the limited sensing capability
(i.e., only one resource can be sensed at a given time), it is also
crucial to choose judiciously which resource to sense at each
time. This problem arises in cognitive radio systems where the
resources are channels that can be either busy or idle.
A. Main Results
We formulate the problem above as a partially observable
Markov decision process (POMDP) with state given by the
L. Ferrari and A. Scaglione {Lorenzo.Ferrari,Anna.Scaglione@asu.edu} are
with the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona
State University, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA.
Q.Zhao {qz16@cornell.edu} is with the School of Electrical Engineering,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation CCF247896

current time, the set of remaining resources for which a
utilization decision has not been made, and the belief on the
state of these resources (i.e., the posterior probability that a
resource is in state 0) in Section II. A policy of this POMDP
consists of three components: a set of selection rules indicating
which resources to sense at each time, a set of stopping rules,
and the induced stopping times, indicating when to terminate
the sensing phase of each resource, and a set of decision
rules governing whether to exploit or discard a resource after
sensing (see Section II-B).
In Section III we explicitly characterize the optimal decision
rules and show that the optimal stopping rule is given by two
time-varying thresholds that also depend on the resources with
pending decision and, since characterizing the time-varying
thresholds and the optimal resource selection rules is analytically intractable, we develop a low-complexity suboptimal
policy (described in III-B). Based on insights gained from the
monotone properties of the thresholds in the single-resource
case, we develop a recursive algorithm for computing approximate thresholds. For the resource selection rule, we propose
an index policy based on an interchange argument. This index
rule prioritizes resources according to the integrated effect of
their utilization reward ri , belief values, and the quality of the
sensing measurements (which determines the speed of the state
inference). In Section IV, we showcase two applications of our
framework: cognitive radio and marketing strategy. In Section
V we present simulation results to corroborate our theoretical
findings. The asymptotic optimality of the index selection rule
is also discussed.
B. Related Work
A majority of existing work on sequential sensing focuses
on typical detection metrics: minimizing the expected detection delay subject to constraints on detection accuracy in terms
of the probabilities of false alarm and miss detection. This
body of work can be partitioned into two general categories:
passive sequential hypothesis testing and active sequential
hypothesis testing. The former was pioneered by Wald in 1947
[1], which introduced the procedure known as Sequential
Probability Ratio Test (SPRT). Under this formulation, the
observation model under each hypothesis is predetermined,
and a test only needs to determine when to stop taking
observations and which hypothesis to declare at the time of
stopping. The latter was pioneered by Chernoff in 1959 [2].
Active hypothesis testing has a control aspect that allows the
decision maker to choose the experiment to be conducted at
each time. Different experiments generate observations from
different distributions under each hypothesis. An active test

2

thus includes a selection rule (i.e., which experiment to carry
out at each given time) in addition to a stopping rule and
a declaration rule. Following these seminal results, there has
been an extensive body of work on both passive (see, for
example, [3]–[8] and references therein) and active (see [9]–
[14] and references therein) hypothesis testing.
There are a couple of studies on sequential sensing for
anomaly detection under the objective of minimizing operational cost [15], [16] which can be considered as a utility
function. Different from this paper, these studies either restrict
admissible sensing strategies to those that declare the state of
one process before starting sensing another process (i.e., no
switching across processes) [15] or focus on asymptotically
(when the horizon length approaches infinity) optimal policies.
In the Cognitive Radio literature our utility maximization
problem can be seen as a parametric formulation of the energy
efficiency metric maximization [17], [18]. In [17] the presence
of PU communication is inferred via energy detection (known
to be optimal when no prior information is available) and
a single PU channel was considered. Multiple PU channels
and the capability of switching between different channels,
known as spectrum handoff, is investigated in [19] and an
efficient convex optimization procedure is developed to solve
for the optimal values of the sensing slot duration and the
channel switching probability in order to minimize energy
consumption while guaranteeing satisfying throughput. In [18]
prior knowledge (the vector ω in our model) over the state of
different channels is considered, but the sequential decision
process terminates when the SU decides to transmit over
one single channel. The problem is formulated as DP but no
heuristic is provided to tackle the combinatorial complexity
and no further insight on the threshold structure of the decision
is proposed. The threshold structure for the channel probing
stopping rule that has been proved in [20] and that [18]
refers to, also considers only one possible transmission and
a constant data time scenario, i.e. the transmission time is not
affected by the time spent in sensing the channels. More general utility maximization approaches for cognitive networks
can be found in [21] and [22], which leverage the class
of utility maximization functions for optimal congestion and
contention control introduced in [23]. A censored truncated
sequential spectrum sensing procedure is presented in [24]1 ,
where different cognitive radios sense the same channel and
decide whether to send their estimates to a fusion center that
then performs the final decision over the presence of a PU.
We instead consider a single cognitive radio that can sense
different channels (but only one at a time), which could be seen
as using only one sensor per channel, and therefore each sensor
is sensing a different state. The limit of one sensing operation
at a time, in our formulation, could be seen as a rigid censoring
constraint, with the possibility of suspending the decision over
a channel, while continuing to sense and/or exploit others, and
then potentially reconsider whether to sense or exploit that
channel after some time instants. A concatenation of SPRT is
proposed as a low-complexity, asymptotically optimal policy
1 A review on censoring and sequential procedures can be found in the
references of [24]

in [25].
Additional relevant works can be found in [26]–[35]. The
vast majority considers a rigid separation between exploration
and exploitation phase, while in our framework we enable a
combination of the two over different resources, by accessing
some channels and simultaneously sensing a different resource
at each time. For the application projection of our work,
we will consider spectrum sensing for cognitive radios and
market strategy with online advertisement. Notice that in both
these applications, several works have adopted a Multi-Armed
Bandit (MAB) formulation (see for example [35], [36] for
cognitive radios , [37], [38] for online advertising), whereas
others (including this work) followed a Partially Observable
Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework [27], [39]. It is
important to highlight the following difference: in the MAB
formulation the utility obtained by the player that selects a
certain "arm" (i.e. an action) is the only information that is
used to optimize the future choices. The concept of POMDP,
instead, can be used to cast a wider class of decision problems
where at each time epoch a certain action needs to be designed,
that provides indirect information on what strategy the player
should use to harness the maximum utility. In other words a
’sensing’ action informs what the player should do. The MAB
formulation is a special case of the POMDP in which the
sensing action and the action that brings the utility to the player
are the same thing. Therefore, the POMDP formulation allows
in principle for a richer action space than a MAB problem and
a POMDP cannot necessarily be mapped into a MAB problem.
The key difference between this work and the vast body
of results on hypothesis testing is that the design objective
in the problem studied here is the utility maximization that
directly addresses the trade-off between exploration (i.e., detecting the state of each resource) and the time that remains
for exploitation (of the resources, based on the information
gathered during the sensing phase). Hypothesis testing problems, passive or active, are pure exploration problems. With
respect to the works in [15]- [16], the problem considered
in this paper allows switching across resources and focuses
on a finite horizon, resulting in a full-blown POMDP that
is significantly more difficult to tackle (for a discussion on
the general complexity of POMDP see [40]). In [17]- [19]
no prior information is available and all the channels are
equal. Therefore, there is no ordering of the channels to take
into account and no SPRT procedure to be optimized for the
sensing (performed via energy detection with a deterministic
sensing time), whereas our paper tackles both aspects. The
difference of our model with respect to a concatenation of
truncated SPRT (and therefore a standard truncated SPRT)
[25] is highlighted at the end of Section II, considering the
value function of the POMDP associated with our problem
and in the comparison presented in the simulation results
in Section V. It is useful to remark that, by considering a
time-dependent utility after the decision, in our model the
constraints on the detection metrics vary between channels
and over time, whereas in the majority of other works the
detection metrics constraint are typically constant over time
(see [1] for analysis of truncated sequential hypothesis). To
be more precise, our model can be seen as a Bayesian-

3

risk formulation, where our utility terms can be seen as
the Lagrangian multiplier of the constraints associated to the
detection metrics, that change over time in light of the timedependent utility function. It is clear that when L approaches
infinity, the strategy developed in this paper would not offer a
significant advantage with respect to other simplest quasi-static
strategies (as discussed in [41] for a single resource case) or
the concatenation of SPRT proposed in [25]. However, for
a finite time horizon, the proposed strategy offers a better
performance, as discussed both analytically at the end of
Section II and shown numerically in Section V. Even if
the behavior of the decision thresholds can be intuitive, our
approach to approximate the decision thresholds (Algorithm
1) and the bound on the expected sensing time (presented
in Lemma 6 and used in Algorithm 2), that form our lowcomplexity heuristic, are completely novel and, in light of the
time-dependence and the absence of a close form expression to
map the detection metrics constraints into Lagrange multipliers
for our formulation, cannot be mapped directly into previous
results. The discussion on the asymptotic regret in Section
III-C is reported for completeness, but the asymptotic analysis
is rather straightforward and does not represent the main focus
of this work.
II. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
A. Problem Statement
Assume an agent has L instants of time available for
the sensing and exploitation of a set of resources N =
{1, 2, . . . , N }. The agent accrues a reward that is a function
of an underlying state vector
s , (s1 , . . . , sN )T ∈ S ≡ {0, 1}N ,

(1)

where the entries si ∈ {0, 1} and S is the set of all possible
states. We consider the si as indicators of good (0) or bad (1)
state of a resource. For instance, the “idle” or “busy” state of
a sub-band, where the decision maker has to explore/sense the
channels and gets a reward for utilizing an idle channel and
a penalty for utilizing a busy channel. We assume the states
si are mutually independent Bernoulli random variables with
known prior probabilities given by:
ω[0] = {ωi [0] : i = 1, 2, . . . , N }

ωi [0] , P (si = 0).

(2)
(3)

Let Ak denote the set of resources for which a final decision
of utilizing or discarding has not been reached at time k
(k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 1). Clearly, A0 includes all N resources.
Our model then allows to access multiple resources (removed
from Ak ) and to sense one resource (φk ) at each time instant k.
Underneath the decision there is a sequential binary hypotheses testing problem where a sample o[k] from the selected
resource φk is collected and the conditional probability density
functions of the observations are assumed to be known:
H0φk : sφk = 0,
H1φk

: sφk = 1,

i.i.d

o[k] ∼ f0φk (o)

(4)

o[k] ∼

(5)

i.i.d

f1φk (o)

We want to maximize a utility function that strikes the best
trade-off between the need of acquiring information on the
state s of the channels and the desire of exploiting good
resources as early as possible. The decision maker needs
to design: 1) a set of N stopping rules for the stopping
times τ , {τi : i = 1, 2, . . . , N }, one for each resource,
indicating when a final decision of utilizing or discarding
the resource can be made; 2) a set of N decision rules
δ , {δi ∈ {0(utilize), 1(discard)} : i = 1, 2, . . . , N }, one
for each resource, indicating the final decision at the time τi
of stopping; 3) a sequence of selection rules φ , {φk : k =
0, 1, . . . , L − 1} indicating which resource to sense at time k
(if Ak is not empty). Let τi denote the time instant at which
a final decision on whether to utilize or discard resource i is
made and τ̃ = maxi τi be the total sensing time, all depending
on the two sets of rules (τ , φ). The decision maker’s actions
are the solutions to the following optimization problem:
"
#
N
X
max. E[U (s, N , L, c, τ , δ, φ)] , E −cτ̃ +
(L − τi )Ri (si ; δi )
τ ,δ ,φ
i=1
subject to τ̃ ≤ L − 1.

(6)
where the objective function has two terms:
• −cτ̃ represents an effective sensing cost, and c is the
sensing cost per unit of time;
• the function Ri (si ; δi ) is the utility per unit time for
exploiting resource i:


if δi = si = 0
ri
(7)
Ri (si ; δi ) = −ρi
if δi = 0, si = 1


0
if δi = 1
where ri , ρi > 0 indicate, respectively, the reward and
the penalty for utilizing a good resource and utilizing a
bad resource.
We can immediately notice an asymmetry in the function
corresponding to the exploitation reward in (7) since, if one
decides the resource is in bad state (i.e. that si = 1), the utility
accrued is the same regardless of the real state of the channel.
Note that, since c can be moved out of the expectation in (6),
E [U ∗ (s, N , L, c)] = max E [U (s, N , L, c, τ , δ, φ)] decreases
τ,δ,φ

monotonically with c, therefore the value of c is typically
limited by an effective cost (i.e. the energy required for the
receiver to continue sensing a channel in a spectrum access
problem) and is not chosen to further optimize the achievable
expected utility.
B. A POMDP Formulation

In this subsection, we will model the optimization in (6) as
a Partially Observable Markov Decision Problem (POMDP),
and use dynamic programming tools to describe the optimal
τ ∗ , δ ∗ , φ∗ . The state vector s is not directly observable,
therefore the decision maker has to rely on her belief regarding
the occupancy of the resources in order to make a decision.
Let ω[k] denote the belief vector at instant k (i.e., the vector
of posterior probabilities that a resource is in state 0 given all

4

past observations). We can use Bayes rule to derive the belief
update after a new observation and write

and this formulation will be used in the remainder of this work
to show the structure of the optimal policy. We would like to
point out that the formulation of the POMDP in (11) gives no
ω[k + 1] = Π(ω[k], o[k], φk )
(8) indication on the fact that the channel sensed at time k should
ωi [k + 1] = Πi (ωi [k], o[k], φk )
(9) continue to be sensed at time k + 1 or included in the set D,

i
i.e. a concatenation of independent truncated SPRT over each
ωi f0 (o)

if i = φ
Πi (ωi , o, φ) , ωi f0i (o) + (1 − ωi )f1i (o)
(10) channel represents a suboptimal strategy for our problem and

is optimal only for L → ∞.
ωi
if i 6= φ
Remark 1: Our formulation can be modified to account
The optimization problem in (6) can therefore be formulated for correlation between group of resources. If we keep the
as a POMDP where the belief vector ω[k] represents the state condition that it is possible to sense only one resource at
for the decision maker and the state transitions equations are each time, the belief update rule in (8) should be modified
given by the belief update rule in (8). At each time instant to update also the ωi ’s of resources correlated with the sensed
k, based on the current belief ω[k], the decision maker first one. The subset of resources, that can be accessed at each time,
removes from Ak all those resources for whom a final decision should contain all the ones correlated with each other, i.e. if
of utilizing or discarding can be made (we refer to this set as two resources are correlated, they should be added to D at the
D), and then she chooses one of the remaining resources to same time, due to the possibility of gaining knowledge on a
sense at time k. The value function of the POMDP problem resource for which a terminal decision has already been made.
can be expressed as:
It follows that, for each group of correlated resources, we have
to consider a sub multi-hypothesis problem for all the possible
V (ω, Ak , k)
(11)

 combinations of binary states, and find a similar approximation
i
, max (L − k)Vd (ω, D) +
max
Vt (ω, Ak+1 , k) as the one presented in the next section for the decision regions
D⊆Ak
i∈Ak+1 ≡Ak \D
in the plane of the belief vector over these resources (for details
where Vd (ω, D) indicates the maximum expected reward on the geometry of such structure see [42]). This in principle
given by the resources in D for each of the (L − k) remaining can be handled for small groups of correlated resources, but
instants and Vti (ω, A, k) represents the value accrued for makes the problem even more complex.
deciding to sense the resource i at time k (i.e. φk = i). It is
III. O PPORTUNISTIC S EQUENTIAL S ENSING
easy to see from the utility function
P (7) ithat Vd has an additive
structure, i.e. Vd (ω, D) =
V
(ω
).
Mathematically
i
i∈D d
A. The Optimal Stopping Rule and Decision Rule
the functions Vdi (ωi ) and Vti (ωi , A, k) can be expressed as
In this section we first describe the correspondence between
follows:
the actions of our decision process as solution of (11) and
Vdi (ωi ) , max E [Ri (si ; δi )]
(12) the optimal rules (τ ∗ , φ∗ ) introduced in II-A, that the deδi ∈{0,1}
Z
cision maker needs to determine. Then we introduce a lowi
complexity policy to approximate the optimal action. Let us
Vti (ω, A, k) , −c+ V (Π(ω, o, i), A, k + 1) f1−ω
(o)do
(13)
i
start by considering the solution of (17) at time k, i.e.:
for k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 1 where we need a final condition
D∗ = arg max J(D).
(19)
V (ω, A, L) = 0, ∀A, ω, to encode the constraint in (6). In
D⊆Ak
(13) we have defined
By definition of the set of optimal stopping times τ (see (6)),
(i)
(i)
(i)
f1−ωi (o) , ωi f0 (o) + (1 − ωi )f1 (o)
(14) for each resource i, the optimal stopping time τi∗ is:
(
It is easy to see that
k,
for i ∈ D∗
∗
τ
=
(20)
i
k0 > k
for i ∈ Ak \ D∗ .
Vdi (ωi ) = max{(ri + ρi )ωi − ρi , 0}.
(15)
In light of the outer maximization over D in (11), the optimal
selection rule for the decision maker will be:

Thus the optimal final decision δi∗ is given by


ρi
− ωi
δi∗ = u
ρi + ri

(16)

where u(·) is the unit step function. The value function
V (ω, Ak , k) can be seen as the result of the maximization
of a set function under set constraints, that is:
V (ω, Ak , k) = max J(D)

(17)

D⊆Ak

where

J(D) ,



(L − k)Vd (ω, D) + max

i∈Ak\D

Vti (ω, Ak \D, k)

(18)

φ∗k =

arg max
i∈Ak+1 ≡Ak \D ∗

Vti (ω, Ak+1 , k)

(21)

From (20) and (21) it emerges how the optimal selection rules
φ∗ and the optimal stopping times τ ∗ are coupled. We then
introduce the following lemma:
Lemma 1: ∀Ak ⊆ N , i, j ∈ Ak and for k = 0, . . . , L − 1,
both Vti (ω, Ak+1 , k), V (ω, Ak , k) are convex functions of ωj .
Proof The proof is in Appendix A. It is similar to the approach
used in [43] to prove the convexity of the Q-functions.
Lemma 1 induces the structure of the optimal stopping rules,

5

which describe the optimal stopping times τi∗ , i = 1, 2, . . . , N
that we formally present in the following theorem:
Theorem 1: The optimal stopping time τi∗ , ∀i ∈ N is
described by two thresholds (ν1i , ν0i ) that depend on the
remaining time and channels to be explored, i.e. (ν1i =
ν1i (Ak , k), ν0i = ν0i (Ak , k)) such that at any k the optimum
action for the resource i is
• take a final decision over resource i (i.e. τi = k) if
ωi [k] ≥ ν0i (Ak , k) ∨ ωi [k] ≤ ν1i (Ak , k)
• postponing the decision on resource i (i.e. τi > k), if
ν1i (Ak , k) < ωi [k] < ν0i (Ak , k)
Furthermore ∀i, Ak , k
i
≤ ν0i (Ak , k) and from (16) it follows that:
ν1i (Ak , k) ≤ ρiρ+r
i
(
1 if ωi [k] ≤ ν1i (Ak , k)
∗
(22)
δi =
0 if ωi [k] ≥ ν0i (Ak , k).
Proof Following the same approach we used to show the
convexity of V (ω, Ak , k) in Appendix A, we rewrite (11) for
an arbitrary resource i as follows:


V (ω, Ak , k) = max
max J(D), max J(D) (23)
{i}⊆D⊆Ak

D⊆Ak \{i}

where the function J(D) has been defined in (18), and then
we refer to the two terms of the outer maximization as
f1 =
max J(D) and f2 = maxD⊆Ak \{i} J(D). Note
{i}⊆D⊆Ak

that f1 corresponds to the maximum value from the actions
that immediately decide on resource i, whereas f2 indicates
the maximum value from the actions that do not decide on
resource i at time k. The convexity of f1 and f2 is proven in
Appendix A. Clearly f1 ≥ f2 for ωi = 0 and for ωi = 1 since,
when the state of the channel is known, is clearly preferable
(or equivalent) to immediately decide on it, and also f1 is a
piece-wise linear function of ωi with only two segments that
i
intersect in ωi = ρiρ+r
(see definition of Vdi (ωi ) in (15)).
i
Hence, there are only two possibilities:
i
i
• f1 < f2 for ν1 (Ak , k) < ωi [k] < ν0 (Ak , k) where
ρi
i
i
0 ≤ ν1 (Ak , k) ≤ ρi +ri ≤ ν0 (Ak , k);
f1 ≥ f2 ∀ωi ∈ [0, 1].
In this second case, we will say the two functions do not
intersect, i.e. there is no region where the decision maker
should prefer to not include the resource in D; therefore we set
i
to indicate the decision maker
ν1i (Ak , k) = ν0i (Ak , k) = ρiρ+r
i
should immediately decide on resource i and this concludes
the proof.
•

It is not entirely surprising that the problem we defined
leads to an optimal policy with a two thresholds structure,
since analogous policies have been found to be optimal for a
general truncated SPRT [44] with a deadline constraint either
deterministic [45] or stochastic [46] and in general many
different sequential decisions schemes. However, as described
in the Introduction, our formulation is different in light of the
time dependence of the Bayesian term, i.e. the different utility
that a decision over a certain resource can produce at different
times.
Theorem 1 is a description of the optimal stopping rules but
does not indicate how to compute the two thresholds nor how

(L

k)ri + V (!, Ak

i, k)

f2
V (!, Ak

f1

i, k)

ri
Vdi (!i )

0

⇢i
⇢i + r i

⌫1i (Ak , k)

⌫0i (Ak , k)

1

!i

Fig. 1. Representation of the functions f1 and f2 of ωi from (23) at time k

to select the resource φ∗k to be sensed at time k. Due to the
recursive nature of the function Vti (ω, Ak+1 , k) in (13) and the
dependence on the rest of the system, the exact computation of
these optimal thresholds remains elusive. In order to provide
a suboptimal strategy that is computationally manageable in
Section III-B, let us look at the situation where we have
only one resource and we have to choose between testing the
resource or taking a final decision, either δi = 1 or δi = 0.
We will refer to the two single-resource decision thresholds
as ν1i [k] = ν1i (i, k), ν0i [k] = ν0i (i, k), where we introduce
this short notation for convenience. We then introduce the
following lemmas.
Lemma 2: ∀i ∈ N , k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 2 the two singleresource thresholds will monotonically contract, i.e.
ν1i [k] ≤ ν1i [k + 1]
ν0i [k]

≥

ν0i [k

+ 1]

(24)
(25)

Proof The intuition behind this lemma is that, as the decision
deadline approaches, the urge to decide whether to utilize
or discard the resource increases and the decision thresholds
shrink. For a rigorous proof see Appendix B.
Lemma 3: ∀i ∈ N , k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 1, A0 ∈ 2N −i , the
following inequalities hold
ν1i [k] ≤ ν1i (A0 + i, k)
ν0i [k]

≥

ν0i (A0

+ i, k)

(26)
(27)

Proof The intuition behind this lemma is that adding resources
to the state A produces a similar effect to removing time
dedicated to each resource. Thus a similar intuition as for
Lemma 2 applies. The full proof is in Appendix C.
Lemma 4: ∀k, k 0 = 0, . . . , L − 1, k 0 ≥ k, A ∈ 2N , i ∈ A
ν1i [k] ≤ ν1i (A, k 0 )
ν0i [k]

≥

ν0i (A, k 0 )

(28)
(29)

Proof Follows from Lemmas 2-3 and setting A = A0 + i.
Lemma 4 gives us insight
on the behavior of the thresholds

ν1i (Ak , k), ν0i (Ak , k) that motivates our heuristic strategy in

6

Section III-B, which uses a single-channel thresholds approximation to replace the optimal thresholds. In the next section
we will first discuss how to approximate the thresholds ν1i [k],
ν0i [k] and then we will introduce a manageable strategy to
sense the resources and decide which action to take based on
the approximate decision thresholds.
B. A Low Complexity Approximation Algorithm
For the rest of this subsection, we will use underline to
indicate a lower bound and overline for upper bound of
a given quantity or function, i.e. a ≤ a ≤ a. For our
heuristic, as we will motivate in the following, we will use the
bounds ν1i [k] and ν0i [k] that correspond to the single-resource
decision thresholds, derived from the formulation previously
introduced. In principle, the tighter are the bounds we can
provide for the thresholds, the better our heuristic will perform.
Let us start by finding simple bounds. The decision thresholds
(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) at time k are the solutions with respect to ωi of
(L − k)Vdi (ωi ) = Vti (ωi , i, k).

(30)

From the convexity of Vti (ωi , i, k) (see Lemma 1) and the
values of the function for ωi = 0, 1 we know that (see Fig.2)
Vti (ωi , i, k) ≤ −c + (L − k − 1)ri ωi .

(31)

Furthermore, Vdi (ωi ) is piece-wise linear with only two
(L

k

1)ri

c + (L

k

k)Vdi (!i )

Vti (!i , i, k)

0

1
⌫1i [k]

⌫1i [k]

F̄ω` i [k+`] (ω|ϕ, s) , P {ωi [k + `] ≥ ω|ωi [k] = ϕ∩si = s} (36)
µi [k|s] , F̄ω1i [k+1] (ν1i [k]|ν0i [k − 1], s)
− F̄ω1i [k+1] (ν0i [k]|ν1i [k − 1], s)

(37)

− F̄ω1i [k+1] (ν0i [k]|ν0i [k − 1], s)

(38)

where (36) is the complementary CDF of the updated belief,
which is a random variable while (37)-(38) refer to the
probability of not overcoming the belief thresholds.
We will then prove
Lemma 5: ∀i ∈ N , k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 1 we can derive the
following upper and lower bound for the function Vti (ωi , i, k)

1)ri !i

(L

c

i
if (30) has no
where we consider ν1i [k] = ν0i [k] = ρiρ+r
i
solutions for ωi ∈ [0, 1]. The bounds above can be very
loose depending on the parameters of our problem and lead
to a poor approximation. Potentially tighter upper and lower
bounds than the ones directly obtainable from (33)-(34)-(35)
can be found using a probabilistic approach to write the
value function of our dynamic program. The general idea is
to consider a worst and a best case scenario any time the
belief over a certain resource has not crossed one of the
two thresholds. This is possible since the belief update (for
a given observation) and the value function are monotonically
increasing functions of ωi (details are reported in Appendix
D). Let us define the following functions for s = 0, 1

µi [k|s] , F̄ω1i [k+1] (ν1i [k]|ν1i [k − 1], s)

k)ri

c + (L

By intersecting the upper bound for Vti (ωi , i, k) in (31) with
(L − k)Vdi (ωi ) it follows:


c
ρi
i
ν1 [k] = min
,
(33)
(L − k − 1)ri ρi + ri


(L − k)ρi − c
ρi
ν0i [k] = max
,
(34)
(L − k)ρi + ri ρi + ri
ρi
ν1i [k] = ν0i [k] =
(35)
ρi + ri

⌫1i [k] = ⌫0i [k] =

⇢i
⇢i + r i

⌫0i [k] ⌫0i [k]

!i

Fig. 2. Representation of the two functions of ωi : Vti (ω, i, k) associated
to the test of resource i and (L − k)Vdi (ωi ) for the immediate decision on
resource i.
i
.
segments that intersect in ωi = ρiρ+r
i
Remark 2: A more general formulation with 4 different
rewards/penalties for (7) would not alter the structure of the
problem nor invalidate our results. Our definition has been
motivated by the emphasis we want to put on the utilization
of the resources, which we assume occurs only if the detected
state is 0, but if one had defined
 i

C00 > 0 if si = 0, δi = 0

C i < 0 if s = 0, δ = 1
i
i
10
Ri (si ; δi ) ,
(32)
i
C11
>
0
if
s
=
1,
δ
i
i =1


 i
C01 < 0 if si = 1, δi = 0

then with some manipulations, one can find the strategy would
have the same structure, where Fig.2 would be “rotated".

Vti (ωi , i, k) = −c
(L−2 "
#
`
`
X
Y
Y
ωi
µi [m|0] + (1 − ωi )
µi [m|1]
+ min
`=k

m=k+1

m=k+1

n
h


max −u[` − k]c + (L − ` − 1) ν0i [`]ri F̄i1 ν0i [` + 1]|ν0i [`], 0

i o
o
−(1− ν0i [`])ρi F̄i1 ν0i [` + 1]|ν1i [`], 1 , 0 , (L − k − 1)ri ωi
(39)

Vti (ωi , i, k)

L−2
X

=−c +

`=k

"
ωi

`
Y

µi [m|0] + (1 − ωi )

m=k+1

`
Y

#
µi [m|1]

m=k+1

n
h


max −u[` − k]c + (L − ` − 1) ν1i [`]ri F̄i1 ν0i [` + 1]|ν1i [`], 0

 o
−(1 − ν1i [`])ρi F̄i1 ν0i [` + 1]|ν0i [`], 1 , 0
(40)
where we used the step function u[k] = 1 for k > 0
and u[0] = 0 and the short notation F̄i1 (ω|ϕ, s) for
F̄ω1i [`+1] (ω|ϕ, s).

7

Proof See Appendix D. Notice that, since we evaluate these
bounds at time k in ωi , the bounds for the thresholds at time
` = k can be replaced with ωi (same holds for the bound in
(54) in Section IV-B).
Gathering these results, we can now present our thresholds
approximation in Algorithm 1. Note that our approach is valid
irrespective of the sensing model. In fact, in order to express in
closed form the bounds in (39)-(40) one only needs to evaluate
the functions F̄ω1i [k+1] (ω|ϕ, s) in (36).
We highlight it is important to run the algorithm for decreasing value of k in order to use potentially tighter bounds
when we compute (39)-(40) for lower values of k. The last
step in the algorithm is a direct consequence of Lemma 2. In
Section V we will numerically illustrate how the tightness of
the bounds from Algorithm 1 is highly dependent on the value
of the parameters of our utility function and on the quality of
the test (i.e the sensing SN R ζi for our application). Having

Algorithm 1: Thresholds Approximation Algorithm
∀i ∈ N
1) set
ν1i [L − 1] = ν1i [L − 1] = ν0i [L − 1] = ν0i [L − 1] =

ρi
ρi + ri

2) for k = L − 2 : −1 : 0 do
i
• Compute Vti (ωi , i, k) from (39) and Vt (ωi , i, k)
from (40)
• find the numerical solutions ω1 < ω2 of
Vti (ωi , i, k) = (L − k)Vdi (ωi )
where ω1 = ω2 =
Set

ρi
ρi +ri

if no solutions.

ν1i [k] = ω1

decision at time τi , can be upper-bounded as follows:




ς ν0i [k], ωi [k] + D̂(f0i ||f1i )
E[τi − k|k] ≤ min ωi [k]

D(f0i ||f1i )




ς ωi [k], ν1i [k] + D̂(f1i ||f0i )
+(1 − ωi [k])
,
L
−
k
−
1

D(f1i ||f0i )
(41)




and
where ς(x, y) , log x(1−y)
(1−x)y
  i 

f0 (o)
i
i
D̂(f0i ||f1i ) , E log
s
=
0,
f
(o)
≤
f
(o)
(42)
i
1
0
f1i (o)

  i 
f1 (o)
i
i
s
=
1,
f
(o)
≥
f
(o)
(43)
D̂(f1i ||f0i ) , E log
i
1
0
f0i (o)
Proof See Appendix E
The reason for immediately deciding on the resources whose
belief has crossed one of the two single-channel thresholds
follows from Lemma 4, which implies that at any time instant
k 0 after k the decision maker will always decide not to test
resource i adding kVdi (ωi ) to the overall utility. Therefore
postponing that decision after k will give a lower or equal
expected utility. In other words, if Vdi (ωi ) > 0 and we expect
to select to exploit resource i at some point, we will have a
lower utility postponing that decision; if, instead, Vdi (ωi ) = 0
and we discard channel i we accrue zero utility irrespective
on when we take that action. Using larger thresholds than
the optimal ones appears a legitimate choice for applications
where the accuracy of the test has a larger impact on the
performances than the time devoted to sensing.
We then approximate the optimal selection rule φ∗ with the
ωi [k]ri
index E[τ
which is computed by using the upper-bound
i −k|k]
introduced in Lemma 6. The motivation for the index and its
asymptotic optimality are discussed in Appendix F.

ν0i [k] = ω2
•

find the two numerical solutions ω1 < ω2 of
Vti (ωi , i, k) = (L − k)Vdi (ωi )
where ω1 = ω2 =
Set

ρi
ρi +ri

if no solutions.

ν1i [k] = min(ω1 , ν1i [k + 1])
ν0i [k] = max(ω2 , ν0i [k + 1])
end

introduced two methods to approximate the thresholds, we
now introduce our low-complexity strategy. The pseudocode
for our heuristic is presented in Algorithm 2. Interestingly, the
distance between the two bounds can be used to find an online (not computable a priori) non trivial upper-bound for the
cumulative utility loss of Algorithm 2.
Lemma 6: The expected sensing time for resource i, given
we continue to sense it from time k until we make a final

C. Asymptotic regret
Even if this work focuses on finite horizon, it is useful to
briefly discuss the asymptotic regret. Let us define the regret
Ψ(L) as the cumulative loss over the entire horizon L
X
Ψ(L) = L
ωi [0]ri − E [U (s, N , L, c)]
(45)
i∈N

P

where L i∈N ωi [0]ri represents the maximum achievable
expected utility by a genie that knows exactly the state of each
resource. To find an asymptotically optimal strategy in term of
regret per slot, i.e. a strategy that achieves limL→∞ Ψ(L)
L = 0,
one can simply consider a strategy that senses for a fixed
amount of time growing with log L, that would asymptotically
achieve zero probability to declare the wrong status for each
resource, and then directly derive the limit. This proposed
static strategy would give a cumulative regret with order
O (log L). In our simulation, we will then consider, for the
different proposed strategies, the growth rate of the regret with
log L, specifically limL→∞ Ψ(L)
log L to highlight the importance
of the resource sorting in reducing this quantity. The static
approach, however, is clearly not feasible in the regime of

8

Algorithm 2: Heuristic for the joint design of τ and φ
k = 0, Ak = N ;
while k < L and Ak 6= ∅ do
D = ∅;
1) Search for channels i such that
ωi [k] < ν1i [k] ∨ ωi [k] > ν0i [k];
if there are such channels then
for every channel i that has been found do
D = D ∪ {i};
end
end
2) Take a decision over the resources in D, accrue
utility (L − k)Vd (ω, D) and remove D from the
state (Ak − D → Ak+1 ).
3) Test channel
φk = arg max
i∈Ak+1

ωi [k]ri
E[τi −k|k]

(44)

and update ω[k] from (8).
4) k → k + 1;
end

CSI (Channel Side Information) is not known at the receiver,
therefore the secondary transmitter uses a constant data rate to
S
transmit. We refer to a design parameter Pi,out
that indicates
the probability that the system can be in outage, i.e. the
probability that the secondary transmitter cannot successfully
decode the transmitted symbols. Since we assume Rayleigh
fading, we can express our reward per time instant left



S
S
ri = 1 − Pi,out
W0 log2 1 − γ̄iS ln 1 − Pi,out
(47)
where the derivation can be found in [47]. If instead, the
secondary transmitter decides to use the channel (δi = 0),
interfering with the Primary Transmitter communication (si =
1), then it receives a penalty equal to the loss in outage rate
caused to the Primary User, considering its interference adds
to the noise at the Primary Receiver. Let us in fact assume that
the Primary Transmitter also transmits at a certain outage rate,
P
. In presence of interference from
given by its value of Pi,out
the secondary user its effective transmission rate becomes


P
P
P
Ri,ξ
= (1 − Pi,ξ
)W0 log2 1 − γ̄iP ln 1 − Pi,out
(48)
i
i
where
Pi,Pξ̄i

small L and this motivates our study of the optimum policy
structure and our heuristic for such scenarios.
IV. A PPLICATIONS
A. Sequential Spectrum Sensing
We now use our sequential decision model to find a singleband spectrum sensing technique for cognitive radio systems.
The decision maker is a secondary transmitter and each
resource i is associated with a “channel” to communicate with
a secondary receiver. The term channel is used in a broad
sense and it could represent a frequency band with certain
bandwidth, a set of tones in an OFDM system or a collection of
spreading codes in a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
system. We denote with γiP,S the two instantaneous Signal-toNoise Ratios at the receiver for the primary and secondary
communication respectively. ξi represents the instantaneous
SN R from the secondary transmitter that could interfere with
the primary communication and ζi indicates the instantaneous
SN R at the secondary transmitter for the primary transmitter,
which is the information the secondary transmitter uses to
detect the primary communication. We consider all the communication channels of interest as Rayleigh fading channels,
therefore all the SN R’s are exponentially distributed, i.e.



x
1
for η ∈ γiP , γiS , ξi , ζi
(46)
pη (x) = exp −
η̄
η̄
where η̄ indicates the average value of η. The phase of the
received signal is uniform. If the secondary transmitter decides
to transmit over the i-th channel (δi = 0) and the Primary
Transmitter is not transmitting (si = 0) then it accrues a
utility per time instant which is a function of γiS . For our
S
model, we decide to choose the outage rate (Ri,out
) as the
reward per time instant left (ri ), since it is reasonable to
assume a slowly varying channel and that the instantaneous

P
P
Pi,out
− ξ¯i ln 1 − Pi,out

=
1 − ξ¯i ln 1 − P P


(49)

i,out

(for details see Appendix G). The penalty ρi is therefore
defined as the loss in rate caused by the interference
P
P
ρi = Ri,out
− Ri,ξ
i




P
P
P
= Pi,ξ̄i − Pi,out W0 log2 1 − γ̄iP ln 1 − Pi,out
(50)

In our model, we assume that cross-channel interference is
negligible, i.e. the only possible interference for the primary communication over channel i is given by a secondary
transmission over the same channel. For this work, we also
assume that the decision maker has perfect knowledge of
P
S
the averages γ̄iP , γ̄iS , ξ¯i , ζ̄i and the designed Pi,out
, Pi,out
for
all the N resources. Our signal model considers standard
AWGN, therefore when no primary transmission is present,
the received baseband complex equivalent signal (only noise)
samples are independent identically distributed CN (0, N0 )
(which stands for complex circularly symmetric zero mean
normal Gaussian samples with variance N0 ) whereas, when a
primary transmission exists, since we have assumed Rayleigh
fading, the received signal samples are CN (0, Pi +N0 ), where
Pi already accounts for the path-loss which we consider
deterministic (see Section V-A for details on the PHY layer).
It follows that a sufficient statistic for the detection problem
is given by the absolute value squares of the samples of the
received signal, which are χ22 -distributed, i.e. exponential. We
then consider f0i (o), f1i (o) exponential with parameter θ0i , θ1i
θi
and the ratio θ1i = 1 + ζ̄i .
0
For this particular sensing model, the KL distances are
known and the two terms D̂(f0i ||f1i ), D̂(f1i ||f0i ) can be computed directly from their definition in (42)-(43):
D̂(f0i ||f1i ) =

log(1 + ζ̄i )
ζ̄i
i
i
− ζ̄i +1 − 1 + ζ̄i , D̂(f1 ||f0 ) = ζ̄i .
ζ̄i
1 − 1 + ζ̄

9

k !k+1

![k] ! ![k + 1]

Continue to advertise ?

Make the product available ?

Fig. 3. Marketing Strategy Application

We can then directly evaluate the upper-bound in (41) for
E[τi − k|k]. We can also give a closed form expression for
the complementary CDF F̄ω` i [k+`] (ω|ϕ, s) in (36), that will
be used for different results that we will present in the next
section. For our specific sensing model, by simple algebra and
use the belief update equation in (8) we can prove that:


`
`
` (1 + ζ̄i )ς(ϕ, ω)
F̄ωi [k+`] (ω|ϕ, 0) = FΓ
+ln 1 + ζ̄i
(51)
ζ̄i


`
ς(ϕ, ω)
+ln 1 + ζ̄i
F̄ω` i [k+`] (ω|ϕ, 1) = FΓ`
(52)
ζ̄i
where FΓ` (x) is the CDF of the sum of ` exponential random
variables with unitary mean. The key step to derive (51)-(52)
is noting that, conditioned on the state s of the resource, we
i.i.d.
have that o[k]
∼ Exp(1). Once we have a closed expression
θsi
for F̄ω` i [k+`] (ω|ϕ, s) for s = 0, 1 and expressions for ri , ρi
in (47)-(50) respectively, we can follow Algorithm 1 to find
bounds on the thresholds and use Algorithm 2.
B. Marketing Strategy
Another potential application is in marketing. Consider a
retail company trying to decide, from a set of N potential
products, which to buy from wholesales for a new season.
The products are seasonal and lose their value at the end
of the season. The length of the season is L days. At the
beginning of the season, the probability of a successful sale
of product i to a typical customer is ωi [0]. The company can
influence the market by advertising product i with a daily
advertising cost of ci . Assume that under daily advertising, the
probability of successful sale evolves according to a Markov
process with state space [0, 1]. After k (k = 1, 2, . . .) days
of advertising, assume that the probability of successful sale,
ωi [k], can be inferred, for example, from the number of clicks
of the ads [39]. The decisions the company needs to make
is when to stop advertising and if yes, whether to abandon
product i or buy from the whole sale and make it available
for its customers (see Fig.3). Suppose that after k days of
advertising, the company chooses to make product i available.
With stochastically static customer arrivals, the expected profit
from product i per day for the remaining L − k days of the
season is [ωi [k]ri − (1 − ωi [k])ρi ], where ri is the difference
between the retail and the wholesale prices and ρi is the
daily holding cost of the unsold product. We assume that
the company will stop advertising after deciding to buy in
from wholesale and the probability of successful sale will
stay at ωi [k]. Based on the well established equivalence of
a POMDP with partially observable states (i.e., si in the

previous sections) to an MDP with belief (i.e., ωi [k]) as the
fully observed states, we can see that the sequential decision
problem studied in the previous sections apply to this marketing application assuming that the company advertises no more
than one product each day and the Markovian transitions of
ωi [k] under daily advertising satisfies (8). In this case o[k] is
a latent random variable (not an observation) drawn from the
mixture ωi [k]f0i (o)+(1−ωi [k])f1i (o) (where i is the advertised
product at time k) such that
ωi [k + 1] =

ω[k]f0i (o[k])
.
+ (1 − ωi [k])f1i (o[k])

ω[k]f0i (o[k])

(53)

From (53) we have that the structure of the value function
applies to this model as well, where for this case si is not
an underlying binary state of the product, but is the outcome
of the daily Bernoulli experiment in which the probability ωi
models the willingness of the customers to buy that product.
Under this assumption the two probability distribution functions f0i (o), f1i (o) are interpreted as a parameter model fitting
for the behavior of ωi from previous market data series relative
to similar products. The motivation for assuming such model
for the marketing application is that it is a relative simple
model to fit but at the same time has a high flexibility given
that f0 and f1 are general functions with no restriction other
than being pdfs. Furthermore the behavior of the function in
(53) is such that ω is more sensitive to changes when it takes
intermediate values (i.e. around 21 ) and tends to saturate at
the edges, i.e. when it approaches either 0 or 1. Indeed, it is
reasonable to assume the advertisement can be more impactful
if the customer’s uncertainty is higher, rather then when there
is a clear indication of interest, in one way or the other, for
a specific product. Also, this model takes into account the
avalanche effect that a popular product tends to become more
and more popular: if ωi [k] increases, it is more likely o[k]
will be drawn from f0i (o) (higher weight in the mixture) and
this will increase ωi [k] and so on. Therefore, since the action
space and the expected utility correspond to the one described
in our framework, our model applies. The bounds for the Vt
function need to be modified to account for the absence of a
true underlying state. The upper bound becomes:
(L−2 `
X Y
i
Vt (ωi , i, k) = −c + min
µi [m] max {−u[` − k]c
`=k m=k+1

h
n


+ (L − ` − 1) min ν0i [`](ri + ρi ) − ρi F̄i1 ν0i [` + 1]|ν0i [`], 0 ,

oi o
o
ri F̄i1 ν0i [` + 1]|ν0i [`], 0
, 0 , (L − k − 1)ri ωi .
(54)
but a generalized lower bound is not tight and therefore, we
have only used (54) in our simulation. The proof for obtaining
(54) is very similar to that given in Appendix D for the bounds
in Lemma 5 and it is omitted for brevity. Notice that the bound
for the expected sensing time in Lemma 6 does not hold in
this case, due to the different nature of the random variables
o[k]’s. Because of this, we cannot use the heuristic selection
rule and, in the example shown in the simulation section, we
have considered only the case in which the advertiser has a
single product to decide on. The development of an analogous

10

bound for the expected sensing time for this different model
is left for future work.

Primary Receiver
Secondary Receiver
Primary Transmission
Secondary Transmission

V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
We now present our simulation results for the two applications presented: cognitive radio and marketing.
A. Cognitive Radio
We highlight that, for the case of a single resource, we
can compute the optimal decision thresholds (ν1i [k], ν0i [k])
obtained by MonteCarlo evaluation of the integral in (13). In
our simulations we will show the improvement in the utility we
can get by using the decision threshold bounds obtained with
our approach in Algorithm 1 instead of using the easy bounds
in (33)-(34), that are obtained by convexity of the function Vt .
For the cognitive radio case we have the following parameters:
ωi [0] = 0.5, ri = 2, ρi = 2, ζ̄i = 3. In Fig. 4(a) we can see
10
(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) Optimal

E[U (si , i, L, c)]

8

(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) Algorithm 1

6

(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) (33)-(34)

4

(ν1i [0], ν0i [0]) ∀k (33)-(34)

2
0
−2

5

10

15

20

15

20

L

(a) c = 2, % = 1

E[U (si , i, L, c)]

0

−5
(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) Optimal
−10

(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) Algorithm 1
(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) (33)-(34)

−15

(ν1i [0], ν0i [0]) ∀k (33)-(34)
5

10
L

(b) c = 10, % = 2
Fig. 4. Utility for the single-resource case with different decision thresholds
in the regime of small L

how for L ≤ 10 our thresholds approximation in Algorithm 1
can reach the same utility of the optimal decision thresholds,
while for higher values of L it acquires the same utility of the
easy bounds obtainable from (33)-(34). The reason for this
is that, when L increases, our upper-bound for Vt in (39),
which is essentially a sum of upper-bounds, becomes looser.
We also looked at the performance obtainable by constant
decision thresholds (further referred to as CT strategy), i.e.


c
ρi
,
(55)
ν1i [k] = ν1i [0] = min
(L − 1)ri ρi + ri

Fig. 5. Network Topology of our Cognitive Radio Scenario

ν0i [k] = ν0i [0] = max



Lρi − c
ρi
,
Lρi + ri ρi + ri


(56)

∀k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 1 which always achieve worse utility
than the others, being the looser approximation of the optimal
thresholds. Notice that for higher value of c and %, in Fig.4(b),
the optimal strategy is to not start sensing and simply accepting
utility 0. Our thresholds approximation (Algorithm 1) is able
to capture this and follows the optimal strategy, while using
the bounds in (33)-(34) or constant thresholds gives a negative
utility. We can notice how the difference in utility between
the optimal strategy and our approximation is higher for the
marketing strategy application and developing new bounds for
this case will be the object of future research. For the second
experiment we analyze the case with multiple channels to
be sensed for the cognitive radio application. We consider a
heterogeneous network with 4 Primary Transmitters located
at the corners of a square with side 500m. Our entire bandwidth goes from 800 to 900M Hz (see Fig. 5). A secondary
transmitter wants to find opportunities to communicate with
N = 20 secondary receivers randomly spread around. The 20
channels have a bandwidth of 5M Hz and we assume they are
equally divided among the 4 Primary transmitter: observations
are then collected at the Nyquist rate for the single channel,
i.e. 2µs. We assumed that the primary transmitter power is
10dBm and the height of the transmitter is 10m, while for the
secondary we chose power equal to 5dBm and a transmitter
height of 3m. The height of all the receivers is equal to
1m. We assume the secondary transmitter has an estimate
for γ̄iS (the average SN R at the secondary receiver from
the secondary communication) and ζ̄i (the average SN R at
the secondary transmitter from the primary communication),
considering a deterministic path loss propagation model. We
used a deterministic two-ray model to predict the average
SN R received [48], i.e.
the
 Pi value introduced in Section
h2 h2
IV-A i.e. Pi = Pt G dt 4 r . The value of G has been set to
i
2 · 10−4 to have average received SN R (ζi ) at the secondary
(in case of primary transmission) in the range of 5 − 10dB,
which is a reasonable range if we assume to only have thermal
noise and no additional interference over the channel. The secondary transmitter does not know the position of the potential
primary receiver but he estimates γ̄iP (the average SN R at the
primary receiver from the primary communication, without
interference) and ξ i (the average SN R from the secondary
transmitter to the primary receiver, that could interfere with an
existing primary communication), by considering the closest
point the primary receiver could be in the coverage area,

11

i∈Ak+1

and add to D the remaining ones. The motivation for this
additional step is that, since we expect to not have time to
sense all of them, we might start acquiring positive utility
in expectation from some of them. In Fig.6 we indicate this
additional removal with “AR”. We can see that for L ≤ 10 the

rule by looking at the two strategies that do not sort the
resources (dashed lines) and are clearly outperformed by the
other strategies. In Fig. 7 we show the utility achieved by
the 4 strategies previously introduced: Alg 2, CT, NS, CTNS
for moderate values of L (i.e. 70 ≤ L ≤ 100). We can
see how Algorithm 2 outperforms the other strategies and
also that when we increase the cost c, the performances of
CT, initially close to our complete heuristic, get worse and
considering time-varying threshold becomes more important
than sorting, i.e. the NS utility is higher than CT. The CTNS
approach is always the worse. The same trend was observed
for different values of %. Finally, we look at the regime for
700

E[U (s, N , L, c)]

600
500

Alg 2
NS
CT
CTNS

400
300
200
70

80

100

90

100

90

100

(a) c = 1, % = 2
500
400
300

Alg 2
NS
CT
CTNS

200
100
0
70

80
L

(b) c = 5, % = 2

100
Alg 2 + AR
Alg 2
CT + AR
CT
NS
CTNS

60

500
400
E[U (s, N , L, c)]

80
E[U (si , i, L, c)]

90
L

E[U (s, N , L, c)]

i.e. the highest interference he could create (which does not
necessarily correspond to the highest ρi ). As explained in
Section II-A, the value of c is limited by the actual cost
of testing. We want to study how the performances in terms
of utility for different strategies (stopping rule and selection
rule) change for different values of % and c. We compared the
performances of Algorithm 2 with three possible alternatives:
1) A selection rule that follows an initial arbitrary order
(indicated in our plot with N S= “No Sorting”), i.e.
φk = arg maxi∈Ak+1 i.
2) Constant decision thresholds (indicated in our plot with
CT = “Constant Thresholds”), as in (55)-(56) ∀i ∈ N
3) both 1) and 2) (indicated with CT N S)
Notice that the NS procedure corresponds to conducting a
sequence of concatenated truncated SPRT, which, as highlighted in Section II, represents a suboptimal strategy for our
problem (even with optimal thresholds). We will study the
performances in three different regimes of L. For low values
of L (generally L ≤ N ) the coupling of the problem becomes
more relevant since there is no time for the decision maker
to sense all the resources and the single-resource decision
thresholds are a loose approximation of the actual optimal
thresholds which are much tighter. In light of this, we add
the following step in our Algorithm 2. After computing the
quantities E [τi − k|k] for i ∈ Ak from (41) and sort the
resources according to our index in (44), we keep in Ak+1
all the resources with higher index as long as the following
condition is satisfied:
X
E[τi − k|k] < (1 + )(L − k − 1)
(57)

40
20

300

Alg 2
NS
CT
CTNS

200
100

0

5

10

15

20

L

0
70

80
L

Fig. 6. Utility of our heuristic in the regime of small L (N = 20, c = 1, % =
1 and  = 0.5 in (57)).

(c) c = 10, % = 2
Fig. 7. Utility of our heuristic in the regime of moderate L

CT modification of Algorithm 2 can achieve higher utility, by
including the additional removal of resources, than the original
Algorithm 2. For L = 20 the importance of the additional
removal becomes almost negligible for Algorithm 2, while
it continues to have an impact on the CT modification. In
this regime of L, we can see the importance of the selection

high L. Following the discussion in Section III-C, in Fig.8
we plot the growth rate of the regret Ψ(L)
log L for the 4 different
strategies. We can see this quantity is approximately constant,
and the key factor to reduce this constant relies in the selection
rule, other than the time-varying behavior of the decision

12

thresholds. Similar trends were observed for different values
of c and % where both higher c and % increase the regret Ψ(L).

physical understanding of the role played by the parameters
in the utility accrued by the decision maker for two different
applications: cognitive radio and marketing strategy.
A PPENDIX

120

A. Proof of Lemma 1
We first notice that ∀ω, A, V (ω, A, L) = 0 implies
Vtj (ω, A, L − 1) = −c, ∀ j ∈ A and therefore

Ψ(L)
log L

100

Alg 2
NS
CT
CTNS

V (ω, A, L − 1) = max{Vd (ω, D) + max Vtj (ω, A, L − 1)}
D⊆A
j∈A\D
X j
= Vd (ω, A) =
Vd (ωj )

80

60
200

500

1000
L

Fig. 8. Asymptotic growth rate of the regret Ψ(L) with log L for our heuristic
(c = 2, % = 2)

B. Marketing
For the second application of online marketing strategy, as
motivated in Section IV-B, we can only show the case for
a single product. We assumed f0 (o) ∼ N (0; 1), f1 (o) ∼
N (0.75; 1) and the following parameters: ωi [0] = 5, ri =
1, ρi = 1 (where ri , ρi , c are normalized over their unit measure, i.e. thousands of $). In Fig.9 we have plotted, similarly to
what has been shown in Fig. 4, the improvement in achievable
utility obtained by our approximation for the bounds of Vt
compared to the bounds in (33)-(34). We highlight that for

E[U (i, L, c)]

(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) Algorithm 1
(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) (33)-(34)
(ν1i [0], ν0i [0]) ∀k (33)-(34)

2

which is convex in any ωj , j ∈ A, since it is a positive sum
of piece-wise linear functions (see (15)). We then prove the
lemma by induction. We assume V (ω, A, k + 1) is convex
in ωj and we show V (ω, A, k) is convex by showing all the
possible functions Vti (ω, A, k) are convex in ωj . We start by
the case j = i. Without loss of generality, let us consider
two ω say (ω 1 , ω 2 ) which differ only in the j-th entry (i.e
ω`1 = ω`2 , ∀` 6= i). We want to prove that for 0 ≤ λ ≤ 1 we
have λVti (ω 1 , A, k) + (1 − λ)Vti (ω 2 , A, k) ≥ Vti (λω 1 + (1 −
λ)ω 2 , A, k). From (13) we can write (we will use the short
notation ω `,o = Π(ω ` , o, i) for ` = 1, 2)
λVti (ω 1 , A, k) + (1 − λ)Vti (ω 2 , A, k)
Z
i
= −c + λV (ω 1,o , A, k + 1)f1−ω
1 (o)
i

i
+ (1 − λ)V (ω 2,o , A, k + 1)f1−ω
2 (o)do
i
Z h
i
2,o
= −c +
µV (ω 1,o
,
A,
k
+
1)
+
(1
−
µ)V
(ω
,
A,
k
+
1)
i
h
i
i
i
λf1−ω
1 (o) + (1 − λ)f1−ω 2 (o) do
i
i
Z
(a)


≥ −c +
V (µω 1,o + (1 − µ)ω 2,o , A, k + 1)
h
i
i
i
λf1−ω
(58)
1 (o) + (1 − λ)f1−ω 2 (o) do

(ν1i [k], ν0i [k]) Optimal

4

j∈A

2000

0

i

5

10

15

20

L

Fig. 9. Utility for the single-product case with different decision thresholds
in the regime of small L for c = 0.3 for the marketing strategy application

L = 5 only the optimal decision thresholds can guarantee a
positive utility, however our thresholds approximation algorithm achieves a loss which is only 6% of the loss that one
would obtain using the bounds in (33)-(34) and for L = 10
our approximation algorithm utility is 40% higher.

i

where (a) follows from the assumption that V (ω, A, k + 1)
is convex in ωi and µ =
3

1

. Now, if we

2

define ω = λω + (1 − λ)ω we have

i
i
i
f1−ω
3 (o) = λf1−ω 1 (o) + (1 − λ)f1−ω 2 (o)
i

i

(59)

i

i
since f1−ω
(o) is a linear affine function of ωi and also
i
(i)

Πi (ωi3 , o, i) =

[λωi1 + (1 − λ)ωi2 ]f0 (o)
ωi3 f0i (o)
=
i
i
i
f1−ω3 (o)
λf1−ω
1 (o) + (1 − λ)f1−ω 2 (o)
i

VI. C ONCLUSIONS
We proposed a new framework to design a sequence of
tests over a finite time horizon and accrue a utility which
is function of an unknown state vector and depends on the
actions the decision maker takes at each time instant. We
derived the structure of the optimal strategy and we proposed
a heuristic to approximate the optimal decisions. Simulation
results were reported to support our findings and have a

i
λf1−ω
1 (o)
i
i
λf
(o)+(1−λ)f i 2 (o)
1−ω 1
1−ω
i
i

=
=

i

i

(i)
(i)
ωi1 f0 (o)
ωi2 f0 (o)
i
i
λf1−ω
(o)
+
(1
−
λ)f
(o)
1
i
i
1−ωi2
i
f1−ω
f1−ω
1 (o)
2 (o)
i
i
i
i
λf1−ω
1 (o) + (1 − λ)f1−ω 2 (o)
i
i
µΠi (ωi1 , o, i) + (1 − µ)Πi (ωi2 , o, i)

which implies
Π(ω 3 , o, i) = µΠ(ω 1 , o, i) + (1 − µ)Π(ω 2 , o, i).

(60)

13

(a)

Therefore, by replacing (59),(60) in (58) we have

≥

λVti (ω 1 , A, k) + (1 − λ)Vti (ω 2 , A, k)
Z
i
≥ −c + V (Π(ω 3 , o, i), A, k + 1)f1−ω
3 (o)
(61)

and this proves the convexity of Vti (ω, A, k) in ωi . The
convexity of Vti (ω, A, k) in ωj , j 6= i can be proved by
considering two points (ω 1 , ω 2 ) with the same i-th coordinate
(i.e ωi1 = ωi2 = ωi ) and following similar steps as before,
where this time we have
Π(ω 3 , o, i) = λΠ(ω 1 , o, i) + (1 − λ)Π(ω 2 , o, i).

(62)

and we do not need to introduce µ to conclude our proof. To
show the function V (ω, Ak , k) is convex in ωj we rewrite the
maximization over D in (11) as follows:


V (ω, Ak , k) = max
max J(D), max J(D) (63)
{j}⊆D⊆Ak

D⊆Ak \{j}

where the function J(D) is defined in (18). Let us then call
f1 and f2 the two maximizations inside (63) in the order they
appear and let us omit the arguments for brevity. Now if we
see f1 and f2 as functions of ωj we have that both f1 and f2
are convex functions of ωj . In fact ωj in f1 appears only as
argument of Vdj (ωj ) which is a piece-wise linear function of
ωj and therefore convex, whereas in f2 , ωj is an argument of
the second term of J(D), which is the maximization over the
index i of the functions Vti (ω, Ak+1 , k) (i, j ∈ Ak+1 ) that are
all convex in ωj . Therefore the maximum is convex and we can
conclude f2 is convex. The convexity of V (ω, Ak , k) follows
from the fact it is the maximum of two convex functions.
B. Proof of Lemma 2

≥

Vti (ωi , i, k

+ 1) +

Vdi (ωi )

O

=

Vti (ωi , i, k)

Z
+c+

Vdi (ωio )dFio

O
(b)

≥

Vti (ωi , i, k)

+ c + Vdi

Z

ωio dFio



(c)

= Vti (ωi , i, k) + c + Vdi (ωi )

O

where (a) holds for the induction hypotheses, (b) for the
convexity of Vdi and (c) for the martingale property of the
belief update.
Now, to show the two thresholds respect (24)-(25) it is
equivalent to prove the following statement
∀ωi ∈ [0, 1], (L − k)Vdi (ωi ) ≥ Vti (ωi , i, k)

⇒ (L − k − 1)Vdi (ωi ) ≥ Vti (ωi , i, k + 1)

and this can be proved since
(L − k − 1)Vdi (ωi ) = (L − k)Vdi (ωi ) − Vdi (ωi )
(a)

(b)

≥ Vti (ωi , i, k) − Vdi (ωi ) ≥ Vti (ωi , i, k + 1)

where (a) holds by hypothesis and (b) follows from Lemma
7, and this completes the proof.
C. Proof of Lemma 3
We start our proof by highlighting a property of the value
function defined in (11) with the following lemma
Lemma 8: ∀i ∈ N , A0 ∈ 2N −i , ωi ∈ [0, 1], k = 0, . . . , L−1
V (ω, A0 , k) + V (ωi , i, k) ≥ V (ω, A0 + i, k)

Let us first introduce the following lemma
Lemma 7: ∀i ∈ N , ωi ∈ [0, 1], k = 0, . . . , L − 2:
Vti (ωi , i, k)


max (L − k)Vdi (ωio ), Vti (ωio , i, k + 1) + Vdi (ωio ) dFio

ZO



= max (L − k − 1)Vdi (ωio ), Vti (ωio , i, k + 1) + Vdi (ωio ) dFio

i

= Vti (ω 3 , A, k) = Vti (λω 1 + (1 − λ)ω 2 , A, k)

Z

(64)

(65)

Proof Let us consider the function J(D) defined in (18)
refers to the value function when Ak = A = A0 + i and
J 0 (D) refers to the value function when Ak = A0 . We will
again use induction. Clearly (65) holds for k = L − 1 where


Vd (ω, A0 ) + Vdi (ωi ) ≥ Vd (ω, A)

Proof We will prove once again by induction. First we show
that (64) is true for k = L − 2 (we use the short notation
i
ωio = Πi (ωi , o, i) and dFio = f1−ω
(o)do).
i
Z
Z
i
o
o
Vt (ωi , i, L − 2) + c = V (ωi , i, L − 1) dFi = Vdi (ωio ) dFio Then, assuming (65) holds for k + 1, we prove it holds for k.
Let us write (65) as
O

 O
Z
max0 J 0 (D) + V (ωi , i, k) ≥ max J(D)
(66)
(a)
D⊆A
D⊆A
(b)
i
o
o
i
i
i
≥ Vd
ωi dFi = Vd (ωi ) = Vt (ωi , i, L − 1) + Vd (ωi ) + c
and call D̃ = arg max J(D). There are three possible cases:
O
D⊆A

where (a) holds for the convexity of the function Vdi and (b)
holds for the martingale property of the prior belief update
Z
Z
ωi f0i (o) i
i
Πi (ωi , o, i)f1−ω
(o)do
=
f1−ωi (o)do = ωi .
i
i
O
O f1−ωi (o)
Then we show that if (64) holds for k, then it holds for k − 1.
Z
Vti (ωi , i, k − 1) + c = V (ωio , k) dFio
O

Z
=
O



max (L −

k)Vdi (ωio ), Vti (ωio , i, k)

dFio

1) If i ∈ D̃,

max J 0 (D) + V (ωi , i, k) ≥ J 0 (D̃ − i) + (L − k)Vdi (ωi )

D⊆A0

= J(D̃) = max J(D)
D⊆A

2) If i ∈
/ D̃ and i = arg max Vtj (ω, A \ D̃, k)
j∈(A)\D̃

0

max J (D) + V (ωi , i, k)

D⊆A0
(a)

≥ (L − k)Vd (ω, D̃) + V (ω, A0 \ D̃, k) + Vti (ωi , i, k)

14

≥ (L − k)Vd (ω, D̃) + V (ω, A0 \ D̃, k + 1) − c
Z
(b)
+ V (ωio , i, k + 1) dFio ≥ (L − k)Vd (ω, D̃) − c

ZO
+

We now find 2). 3) follows a similar approach and 1) will
be otained using 2) and 3) (in our derivation with P (·|ϕ) we
indicate we are conditioning on ω[`] = ϕ).

Z
`−1

P0 t Ck+1
`
 dt
P0 A`+1 Ck+1 = P0 (A`+1 |t)
`−1
P0 C` Ck+1



V Π(ω, o, i), A \ D̃, k + 1 dFio

C`

O

= (L − k)Vd (ω, D̃) + Vti (ω, A \ D̃, k) = max J(D)
D⊆A

where (a) follows from the definition of our value function in (11) and (b) holds by the induction hypothesis.
3) If i ∈
/ D̃ and i 6= j ∗ = arg max Vtj (ω, A\ D̃, k) the proof
j∈A\D̃

is similar to the previous case.

∀ωi ∈ [0, 1], (L − k)Vdi (ωi ) ≥ Vti (ωi , i, k)
max

{i}⊆D⊆A

J(D) ≥ max0 J(D).
D⊆A

C`

To prove this, we call D∗ = arg max J 0 (D) and use the chain
D⊆A0

of inequalities
max

{i}⊆D⊆A

∗

J(D) ≥ J(D + i) = (L −

k)Vdi (ωi )

+ (L − k)Vd (ω, D∗ ) + max
V j (ω, A0 \ D∗ , k)
0
∗ t
j∈A \D

(a)

0

(b)

D⊆A

where (a) holds by hypotheses, since if (L − k)Vdi (ωi ) ≥
Vti (ωi , i, k) then V (ωi , i, k) = (L − k)Vdi (ωi ) and definition
of J 0 (D), (b) follows by Lemma 8 and (c) by definition of
value function in (11), and this completes the proof.
D. Proof of Lemma 5
Since we are focusing on a specific resource i next, for
brevity we drop the index i and define the following events:

L−2
X
`=k

Cm

P0 A`+1

(71)

P0 B`+1


`
P Ck+1
E [−u[` − k]c + (L − ` − 1)


To find bounds for Vt (ω, k) we will use:

`
1) an upper/lower bound for P Ck+1

`
2) an upper/lower bound for P0 A`+1 Ck+1

`
3) an upper/lower bound for P1 A`+1 Ck+1
First we write:



`−1
`−1
`
P Ck+1
= P C` Ck+1
P Ck+1




`−1
`−1
`−1
= 1 − P A` Ck+1
− P B` Ck+1
P Ck+1

(67)

(72)
(73)

Exactly the same bounds can be found for the case s = 1,
replacing the index of P and the conditioned state on F from
0 to 1. For the case of ` = k, which corresponds to the
probabilities in the first term of the sum in (67), we can use
the bounds in (70)-(71) by considering ν0 [k] = ν1 [k] = ω. We
can then use the recursion in (68) and the bounds previously
found to derive:
`
`
Y
 u.b. Y
≤ ω
µ[m|0] + (1 − ω)
µ[m|1] (74)

 l.b.
`
P Ck+1
≥ ω

m=k

`
[ω[`]rP0 (A`+1 )−(1 − ω[`])ρP1 (A`+1 )] Ck+1

(70)

m=k+1

We then write the function Vt (ω, k) as follows (we use the
short notation P0 (A) = P (A|s = 0) and same for P1 (A)):
Vt (ω, k) = −c +


 u.b. 1
≤ F̄ω[`+1] ν0 [` + 1]|ν0 [`], 0
 l.b. 1

`
Ck+1
≥ F̄ω[`+1] ν0 [` + 1]|ν1 [`], 0
 u.b.

`
1
Ck+1
≤ 1 − F̄ω[`+1]
ν1 [` + 1]|ν1 [`], 0
 l.b.

`
1
Ck+1
≥ 1 − F̄ω[`+1]
ν1 [` + 1]|ν0 [`], 0

`
P0 A`+1 Ck+1

`
P Ck+1

Ak , {ω[k] ≥ ν0 [k]}, Bk , {ω[k] ≤ ν1 [k]},
Ck , Ak ∪ Bk , Ck` =

Following similar steps for the event B`+1 we can derive:

P0 B`+1

(c)

= V (ωi , i, k) + V (ω, A , k) ≥ V (ω, A, k) ≥ max0 J(D)

`
\



max P0 (A`+1 |t) = P0 A`+1 ν0 [`] ≤ P0 A`+1 ν0 [`]
ν1 [`]<t<ν0 [`]

1
1
= F̄ω[`+1]
(ν0 [` + 1]|ν0 [`], 0) ≤ F̄ω[`+1]
ν0 [` + 1]|ν0 [`], 0
l.b.

≥ min P0 (A`+1 |t) = P0 (A`+1 |ν1 [`]) ≥ P0 A`+1 |ν1 [`]
ν1 [`]<t<ν0 [`]


1
1
= F̄ω[`+1]
ν0 [` + 1]|ν1 [`], 0 ≥ F̄ω[`+1]
ν0 [` + 1]|ν1 [`], 0
≤

where the upper and lower bound start by taking out of the
integral the maximum and minimum value of
P0 (A`+1 |ω[`] = t) and notice that
Z


`−1
`−1
P0 ω[`] = t Ck+1
dt = P0 C` Ck+1
(69)

Proving (26)-(27) is equivalent to prove:
⇒

u.b.

`
Y

m=k+1

m=k+1

µ[m|0] + (1 − ω)

`
Y

µ[m|1]

(75)

m=k+1

Once we upper and lower bound the probabilities for each
term of the sum in (67), then the argument of the expectation
is a monotonically increasing function of ω[`]. Therefore, since
`
we are conditioning on the event Ck+1
, the expectation will be
lower or upper-bounded by choosing ω[`] = ν1 [`] or ω[`] =
ν0 [`] respectively. Gathering these results and considering the
convexity of Vti (ωi , i, k), we can write the upper and lower
bound Vt (ω, k), Vt (ω, k) as in (39)-(40) where we introduce
the max to make sure our functions remain above c.
E. Proof of Lemma 6

(68)

Without loss of generality we can prove the lemma at k = 0
and for general k simply consider the time translation and
the equivalent problem for k 0 = 0, 1, . . . , L − k − 1. For the
remainder of the proof the index k is used as the time index

15

for theP
test of resource
 i i that
 starts at time 0. We indicate with
f (o[`−1])
k
Λki , `=1 log f1i (o[`−1]) the log-likelihood of the samples
0
collected for resource i up to time k. By considering the belief
update in (8) and the optimal policy structure in Theorem 1,
a final decision on resource i can be made as soon as
Λki

≥

Υi1

Υi0,1 (Ak , k)

(Ak , k) ∨

Λki

≤

Υi0

(Ak , k)

(76)

i
ς(ωi [0], ν0,1
(Ak , k)),

where
,
and we recall the
resources in the set Ak are the resources for which a decision
is still pending at time k. From (76) it follows that τi

τi , inf 0 ≤ k ≤ L − 1 : Λki ≥ Υi1 (Ak , k)∨Λki ≤ Υi0 (Ak , k)
(77)
is a stopping time. From (28)-(29) with k 0 = 0 we can deduce
∀k = 0, 1, . . . , L − 1, ∀Ak ⊆ N
Υi0 (Ak , k) ≥ ς(ωi [0], ν0i [0]) = Υi0

Υi1 (Ak , k)

≤

ς(ωi [0], ν1i [0])

=

Υi1

(78)
(79)

Therefore
n
o
τ i , inf 0 ≤ k ≤ L − 1 : Λki ≥ Υi1 ∨ Λki ≤ Υi0

(80)

is a stopping time always greater than τi , i.e. P (τ i > τi ) = 1.
We then derive a bound on the expected value of τ i and this
will also hold for τi . We will use a similar technique as the one
used for the thresholds approximation (see Proof of Lemma 5
in Appendix D) to write




E1 Λτi i = E1 Λτi i −1 + Λ1i ≤ Υi1 + E1 [Λ1i |Λ1i > 0] (81)




E0 Λτi i = E0 Λτi i −1 + Λ1i ≥ Υi0 + E0 [Λ1i |Λ1i < 0] (82)
where the bounds follow by τi being the stopping time,
therefore we know Υi0 < Λτi i −1 < Υi1 and Λτi i > Υi1 or
Λτi i < Υi0 . By Wald’s identity we have
 
 
E Λτi i = E[τi ]E Λ1i
(83)
 1


and since E0 Λi = −D(f0i ||f1i ), E1 Λ1i = D(f1i ||f0i ) we
can write
−Υi0 − E0 [Λ1i |Λ1i < 0]
E0 [τi ] ≤
(84)
D(f0i ||f1i )
E1 [τi ] ≤

Υi1 + E1 [Λ1i |Λ1i > 0]
D(f1i ||f0i )

To find such sorting, we use an interchange argument. Let us
consider a pair of arbitrary resources, say 1 and 2, and show
the sorting 1, 2 at time 0 with L instants available is optimal if
(we use the short notation E[τi ] for E[τi − k|k] when k = 0):
− cE[τ1 ] + (L − E0 [τ1 ])ω1 r1 − cE[τ2 − τ1 |τ1 ]
+ (L − E[τ1 ] − E0 [τ2 − τ1 |τ1 ])ω2 r2 >

− cE[τ2 ] + (L − E0 [τ2 ])ω2 r2 − cE[τ1 − τ2 |τ2 ]
+ (L − E[τ2 ] − E0 [τ1 − τ2 |τ2 ])ω1 r1

(a)

− cE[τ1 ] + (L − E0 [τ1 ])ω1 r1 − cE[τ2 ]

⇒

+ (L − E[τ1 ] − E0 [τ2 ])ω2 r2 > −cE[τ2 ] + (L − E0 [τ2 ])ω2 r2
− cE[τ1 ] + (L − E[τ2 ] − E0 [τ1 ])ω1 r1 ⇔
ω1 r1
ω2 r2
>
− E[τ1 ]ω2 r2 > −E[τ2 ]ω1 r1 ⇔
E[τ1 ]
E[τ2 ]

where (a) follows from the assumption the sensing time for
the second resource is not affected by the time spent in sensing
the previous one, which is a reasonable assumption for L
large enough. However, due to the time variant threshold and
the finite horizon scenario, the expected sensing time strongly
depends on the time k the test starts, and is therefore affected
by the sorting. Nevertheless, this index represents a good
approximation that takes into account the identifiability of the
resource and simulation results will corroborate our intuition.
G. Derivation of (48)
The instantaneous SN R at the primary receiver in presence of interference from the secondary transmitter can be
2
γ̄ P |hP |
expressed as γi,Pξ̄i = 1+i ξ̄ |hS |2 , where hP , hS are the two
i
complex channel gains and for Rayleigh fading their absolute
value squared is exponential with unitary mean. By following
the same derivation as in [47] for the no interferer case,
2
2
and assuming independence between hP and hS one
can use the cdf of Y = X1 − X2 , where X1 ∼ Exp(α1 ),
X2 ∼ Exp(α2 ):
y
α1
P (Y ≤ y) = 1 −
y>0
(86)
e− α 1
α1 + α2
to derive (49), and consequently the effective rate for the
primary receiver expressed by (48).

(85)

and combining (84)-(85) (conditioned on the status of the
resource) and evaluating the two bounds in (78)-(79) at any
time k 6= 0 we can obtain the bound in (41).
F. Motivation for the index in our decision algorithm
The reason to approximate the optimal selection rule with
ωi [k]ri
the index E[τ
finds its motivation in the asymptotic utility
i −k|k]
growth. Let us consider L large enough such that we can
neglect the probability of taking a wrong decision over a
certain resource, and we can assume the sensing time for
each resource is not affected by having spent time sensing
other resources before. We also further limit our strategy to
sequentially sense each resource until a decision is made and
then switch to a different resource. Then there is an optimal
sorting for this strategy which maximizes the expected utility.

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Lorenzo Ferrari (S ’14) is currently a PhD student
in Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University. Prior to that, he received his B.Sc. and M.Sc
degree in Electrical Engineering from University of
Modena, Italy in 2012 and 2014 respectively. His
research interests lie in the broad area of wireless
communications and signal processing. He has received the IEEE SmartGridComm 2014 Best Student
Paper Award for the paper “The Pulse Coupled
Phasor Measurement Unit”.

Qing Zhao (F ’13) joined the School of Electrical
and Computer Engineering at Cornell University in
2015 as a Professor. Prior to that, she was a Professor
at University of California, Davis. She received the
Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2001 from
Cornell University. Her research interests are in
the general area of stochastic optimization, decision
theory, machine learning, and algorithmic theory in
dynamic systems and communication and socialeconomic networks. She received the 2010 IEEE
Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award and
the 2000 Young Author Best Paper Award from the IEEE Signal Processing
Society.

17

Anna Scaglione (F ’11) is currently a professor in
electrical and computer engineering at Arizona State
University. She was previously at the University of
California at Davis, Cornell University and University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on various
applications of signal processing in network and data
science that include intelligent infrastructure for energy delivery and information systems. Dr. Scaglione
was elected an IEEE fellow in 2011. She received
the 2000 IEEE Signal Processing Transactions Best
Paper Award and more recently was honored for the
2013, IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award for the best review paper in
that year in the IEEE publications, her work with her student earned 2013
IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award (Lin Li).
She was EIC of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters and served in many
other capacities the IEEE Signal Processing, IEEE Communication societies
and is currently Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control over
Networked Systems.

