Abstract

We proposed a group-based multi channel media access control protocol for cognitive radio to mitigate the control channel bottleneck issue and to utilize multiple channels efficiently. The existing multichannel media access control (MMAC) based protocols suffer from higher delay to access data channels. This underutilizes data channels and lowers the network goodput in dense cognitive radio networks. Our approach mitigates channel access delay in dense cognitive radio networks by grouping the channels and distributing channel negotiations in multiple channels. We evaluated our protocol by simulations compared to the existing MMAC-based protocol. Our proposed approach utilizes channels more efficiently and reduces channel access delay.

Key words: Cognitive radio networks, multi-channels networks, cognitive radio device.

Abbreviation

MMAC, Multichannel media access control; ISM, industrial, scientific and medical; CR, cognitive radio; MAC, media access control; CCC, common control channel;GCC, group control channel; BIs, beacon intervals; ACL, available channel list; DCA,dynamic channel allocation; RTS, requests to send; CTS, clear to send; RES, reservation;ID, identification number; ATIM, ad hoc traffic indication messages.