Spectrum decision for efficient routing in cognitive radio network

Abstract

Abstract-The cognitive radio (CR) nodes in a cognitive radio network (CRN) do not have license to use specific spectrum band. Instead, they use the spectrum bands of the licensed primary users (PU) without interfering with the PU. When the PU becomes active, interfering CRs should leave to another available spectrum band within the PU's tolerable interference delay (TID). Therefore, CRN operates over wide spectrum bands which span many channels. Since each channel is typically licensed to one PU, this requires that channels be sensed separately. This adds monitoring overhead, where the CR should monitor (sense) the channel every TID, which reduces the throughput. For this reason, the node cannot monitor the whole set of channels. Deciding which set of channels to monitor affect other functions in the CRN like routing. Work done on routing in literature assumes that each node maintains a set of available channels which is obtained by sensing. Route setup decision will be made based on the available sets at all nodes. However, there may be some other available channels that the node is not aware of their availability which may enhance the routing quality metric. Also, taking into consideration only the sets of channels available at the CR nodes may preclude finding an end-to-end path. In this paper, we propose a spectrum decision framework that is complementary to the existing routing protocols. This framework is based on two objectives: 1) enhancing the route quality by sensing a few more channels at some nodes. These channels can enhance the quality by: reducing the switching time, requiring shorter sensing time, or expected to be available for longer time; 2) increasing the probability of finding a path by sensing more channels at some nodes in case the routing protocol did not find a path.Simulation results show that the proposed framework can result in enhancement that can be as high as 100% over the routing protocols that build their decisions based on the available channels at each node only.

A cross-layer routing protocol (CLRP) for cognitive radio network

“…Also, the nodes that are required to perform sensing are known, while not all CR nodes need to sense. In our previous work [7], we empirically showed that this additional time takes usually less than a second.…”

Spectrum aware virtual coordinates assignment and routing in multihop cognitive radio network

“…In multiple channel CRN, after one node deciding on the next hop via geographic routing, which channel to use needs to be answered. This problem involves considerations from many aspects, such as minimizing channel switch cost [16], mitigating co-channel interferences [8] etc.. We adopt a lightweight heuristic method in this paper. When there is packet to send and the next hop is decided, packet sender chooses the channel in descending sequence with channel's metric, i.e., likelihood of channel availability, or blocking time.…”

Assessing Routing Strategies for Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

“…It is important to note that routing in CR-based networks must generally be considered with the spectrum sensing decision [ 30 , 31 ]. Thus, protocols relevant to routing in CRSNs can generally be categorized as shown below.…”