Scalable Dynamic Routing Protocol for Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been increasingly considered an attractive solution for a plethora of applications. The low cost of sensor nodes provides a mean to deploy large sensor arrays in a variety of applications, such as civilian and environmental monitoring. Most of the WSNs operate in unlicensed spectrum bands, which have become overcrowded. As the number of the nodes that join the network increases, the need for energy-efficient, resource-constrained, and spectrum-efficient protocol also increases. Incorporating cognitive radio capability in sensor networks yields a promising networking paradigm, also known as cognitive radio sensor networks. In this paper, a cognitive networking with opportunistic routing protocol for WSNs is introduced. The objective of the proposed protocol is to improve the network performance after increasing network scalability. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated through simulations. An accurate channel model is built to evaluate the signal strength in different areas of a complex indoor environment. Then, a discrete event simulator is applied to examine the performance of the proposed protocol in comparison with two other routing protocols. Simulation results show that when comparing with other common routing protocols, the proposed protocol performs better with respect to throughput, packet delay, and total energy consumption.