MAC strategies for single rendezvous multi-hop cognitive radio networks

This paper presents two MAC strategies for multi-hop cognitive radio networks in single radio multi-channel cases. Both strategies use one of the idle multiple channels for communication among secondary users, and the network will leave the current channel and jump to another channel as a group if any primary user appears. The first strategy is based on a pre-defined pattern that will always tune to the next available channel when primary user emerges. The second one is based on the concept of connected dominating set in which a backbone is formed in the network in order to keep the continuity of the communication. The strategies are evaluated in both homogeneous and heterogeneous channels by simulations. Numerical results show that higher throughput has been achieved with the first strategy in homogeneous channels but in heterogeneous channels the latter strategy performs much better.