An effective resource utilization for multi-channel multi-radio environment in cognitive radio wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Cognitive Radio (CR) is phenomenon pertaining to wireless communication where transceivers have intelligence to detect the availability of free channels instantly to make well informed decisions on channel usage. Resource utilization in terms of spectrum access is given paramount importance in Cognitive Radio Wireless Mesh Networks (CRWMN’s). Cooperative opportunistic spectrum allocation is the basis for secondary users to promote cooperative functionality by utilizing the unused spectrum, without causing interference to primary users. Secondary users often try to use best channels out of idle channels licensed to primary users. Priority based resource utilization is essential to ensure high quality communications in cognitive radio networks. On the other hand, Multi-Input and Multi-Output (MIMO) is the antenna technology where both transmitter and receiver use antennas to optimize data speed and minimize errors. Towards this end, in this paper, we proposed a methodology for building a MIMO Cooperative CRWMN’s coupled with Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA) for effective channel access and spectrum allocation. Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) devices provided by National Instruments (NI) with data sets are used for experiments. We built a prototype application using LabVIEW to demonstrate proof of the concept. The experimental results revealed that the proposed methodology enhances the utilization ratio of spectrum resources.