Exploiting spectrum availability and quality in routing for multi-hop cognitive radio networks

Abstract

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are considered as a promising solution to the problem of spectrum under utilization and artificial radio spectrum scarcity. The paradigm of dynamic spectrum access allows secondary users (SUs) to utilize wireless spectrum resources which belong to primary users (PUs) with minimal interference to PUs. Due to the dynamic spectrum availability and quality, routing for SUs in multihop CRNs is a challenge. In this paper, we introduce novel routing metrics that estimate both the future spectrum availability and the average transmission time. Then, we propose two routing algorithms for multihop CRNs that attempt to reduce the probability of spectrum handoff and rerouting upon PU’s arrival. Finally, we conduct simulations, whose results show that our proposed algorithms lead to a significant performance improvement over the reference algorithm.