Cooperative and fair MAC protocols for cognitive radio ad-hoc networks

Abstract

A secondary user (SU) in multichannel cognitive radio ad hoc network (CRAHN) has a limited transmission range, which may raise a hidden multichannel sensing problem. In addition, CRAHNs can be deployed ubiquitously, and SUs from any CRAHNs could co-exist utilizing the spectrum. This situation leads to the fairness issue of spectrum resource sharing between the SUs. Both cooperative and fairness issues are important to CRAHN performance. In this paper, a cooperative and a non-cooperative multichannel (MC)-MAC protocol is proposed. In order to address the fairness issue, a fair multichannel (FMC)-MAC protocol for CRAHN is proposed, which orientates to the fairness in resource sharing. In this FMC-MAC, the SU keeps the current backoff (CB) counter when a PU appears to claim the intended channel. These proposed MAC protocols are simulated using NS2 and compared with other protocols. In addition, a mathematical model using Markov chain is constructed for FMC-MAC and the performance measures are derived. From results, the MC-MAC protocol has enhanced the network utilization and the cooperative scheme has significantly enhanced the packet delivery ratio and decreased the end-to-end delay of SUs in high traffic. The cooperative protocol enhances packet delivery ratio up to 15 % and decreases end-to-end delay down to 32 %, compared to the non-cooperative one. The FMC-MAC protocol with other two existing protocols. From the comparison results, a higher fairness has been shown by FMC-MAC CB while still maintaining a high throughput.