Towards the Use of Cognitive Radio to Solve Cellular Network Challenges Amine Hamdouchi 1(&) , Aouatef El Biari 1 , Badr Benmammar 2 , and Youness Tabii 1 1 National School of Applied Sciences, Tetouan, Morocco aminehamdouchi254@gmail.com,elbiariaouatef@gmail.com, youness.tabii@gmail.com 2 LTT Laboratory, University of Tlemcen, Tlemcen, Algeria badr.benmammar@gmail.com Abstract. Programming and behavioral autonomy constitutes the main features of any cognitive system. In this regard, Cognitive Radio (CR) uses the concept of understanding-by-building in order to achieve two important objectives. These objectives are namely, establishing a long-lasting reliable communication, and allowing the most ef ficient use of the spectrum resources. Achieving said objectives is possible by supporting secondary users to access to the licensed spectrum in an opportunistic fashion, after vacant spectrum holes are detected once a primary user exits. In this paper, we will look to enhance the cellular networks by integrating a cognitive radio to have the so-called cognitive radio cellular network (CRCN). We aim to overcome the current issues and dif ficulties facing the integration of CR in cellular networks. Overcoming these obstacles comes to improving the handover process in primary network and managing the secondary network using, respectively, the reinforcement learning (RL) and the k-nearest neighbors algorithm (k-NN). We also will come with a new architecture describing our vision for every case scenario in the two types of network. Keywords: Cognitive radio  Spectrum management  Machine learning Emerging infrastructure 1 Introduction The continuous progress of communication technologies and the rapid proliferation of radio communication standards and services have induced a spectrum overload, resulting in frequency scarcity. Two separate studies 1 have revealed that spectrum usage varies between 15% and 85% and have shown that the spectrum is sporadically exploited, meaning frequency bands are exploited in particular locations and at particular times. These considerations have motivated the scientific community to develop a new radio technology aiming to maximize the exploitation rate of spectrum and so allow meeting the needs in terms of 1 Studies in the Federal Communications Commission in the United States (FCC) and the Federal Of fice of Communications in the United Kingdom (OFCOM). © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 M. E. Auer and T. Tsiatsos (Eds.): IMCL 2017, AISC 725, pp. 3–10, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75175-7_1