ENC-MAC: Energy-efficient non-overlapping channel MAC for cognitive radio enabled sensor networks

Abstract

The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) has shed new light on WSN technologies. MAC protocol issues improving the network performance are important in WSNs because of the increase in demand for various applications to secure spectrum resources. Cognitive radio (CR) technology is regarded as a solution to the problems in this future wireless network. In recent years, energy efficiency has become an issue in CR networks. However, few relevant studies have been conducted. In this paper, an energy-efficient non-overlapping channel MAC (ENC-MAC) for CR-enabled sensor networks (CRSNs) is proposed. Applying the dedicated control channel approach, ENC-MAC allows the SUs to utilize channels in a non-overlapping manner, and thus spectrum efficiency is improved. Moreover, the cooperative spectrum sensing that allows an SU to use only two minislots in the sensing phase is addressed to en-hance energy efficiency. In addition, an analytical model for evaluating the performance, such as saturation throughput, average packet delay, and network lifetime, is developed. It is shown in our results that ENC-MAC remarkably outperforms existing MAC protocols