A novel proactive handoff scheme with CR receiver based target channel selection for cognitive radio network

Abstract

Spectrum handoff in cognitive radio networks (CRN) enables the cognitive radio (CR) users to guarantee the desired QoS of the primary users. The handoff schemes grant an efficient exploitation of the available spectrum holes in the network. In the presented work, a novel proactive spectrum handoff scheme is made for ad hoc network scenario. Here, a network coordination schemes for unlicensed users is incorporated first. In our proposed framework, unlicensed users coordinate with each other using a Common Control Channel (CCC). Primary user free channel lists (PCL’s) are shared among CR users before actual data transmission to achieve better CR node coordination as well as to share information of nearby scenario. The PCL history stored at each CR transmitter (CRTx) node is used to make channel switching policies and to let unlicensed users vacate a channel before a licensed user utilizes it to avoid unwanted interference. Moreover, the node channel matrix created for the scenario helps to improve the performance further. The improvement is achieved through taking PCL history of CRRx into count. So, a novel proactive approach is developed here which uses the PCL history of both CRTx and CRRx. Simulation results show that proposed novel proactive spectrum handoff outperforms the reactive spectrum handoff approach in terms of higher throughput and fewer collisions to licensed users. Furthermore, a distributed channel selection can achieve higher packet delivery rate compared with existing channel selection schemes.