  In this paper, we study and analyze fundamental throughput-delay tradeoffs in
cooperative multiple access for cognitive radio systems. We focus on the class
of randomized cooperative policies, whereby the secondary user (SU) serves
either the queue of its own data or the queue of the primary user (PU) relayed
data with certain service probabilities. The proposed policy opens room for
trading the PU delay for enhanced SU delay. Towards this objective, stability
conditions for the queues involved in the system are derived. Furthermore, a
moment generating function approach is employed to derive closed-form
expressions for the average delay encountered by the packets of both users.
Results reveal that cooperation expands the stable throughput region of the
system and significantly reduces the delay at both users. Moreover, we quantify
the gain obtained in terms of the SU delay under the proposed policy, over
conventional relaying that gives strict priority to the relay queue.

Networking and Internet Architecture