Cross layer routing design based on RPL for multi-hop cognitive radio networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) is viewed as a revolutionary potential radio technology capable of offering dynamic spectrum access. CR Networks (CRNs) with such spectrum aware devices is a hopeful solution to the spectrum scarcity issue in wireless communication sector. In this paper, an effective routing solution with a cross layer design is proposed for the multi-hop CRNs. Most of the existing work uses Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol as the routing protocol for CRNs. In this work, a novel routing algorithm based on Routing Protocol for Low power and lossy networks (RPL) is being proposed for the CRNs. Routing is accomplished through the formation of colored Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graphs (DODAGs) of which the link frequencies are represented using colors. Hop count and adjacent link interference are counted as the routing metrics. Dynamic spectrum allocation is also done along with routing with the help of RPL. The CRN scenario is vulnerable to link failures due to the appearance of Primary Users (PUs). So route repairing using the Trickle algorithm offered by RPL is also implemented in this work. To implement this algorithm, a traffic aware scheduling is used. A MATLAB simulation is done to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.