Proactive integrated handoff management in CR-MANETs: A conceptual model

In cognitive radio (CR), CR users or also known as secondary users (SUs) are considered as “visitors” to the licensed spectrum. During the case when the primary user (PU) claims the band of the spectrum that is occupied by the SU, the SU´s ongoing call must be transferred to another unused spectrum band. The variation in spectrum band is called spectrum mobility. Spectrum mobility leads to a new handoff in cognitive radio networks, namely spectrum handoff, in which the SUs handover their spectrum band and continue their ongoing calls on an unused spectrum band with different frequency upon the appearance of the PU. In this paper, we investigate a new concept of integrated handoff management in mobile cognitive radio Ad hoc networks (CR-MANET), along with a conceptual framework, its connections and related handoff algorithm.