An Enhanced Synchronized MAC Protocol for Cognitive Radio Networks

Most of the existing media access control protocols for cognitive radio networks are based on global dedicated common control channel (GCC). They use GCC to negotiate for data channels and to protect incumbents. The GCC is prone to saturation problem, DoS attack and wasteful of bandwidth resource. Further, it may be not available in some practical cost-sensitive applications. In this paper, we present an enhanced method for idle channel selection in none-dedicated common control channel based protocol. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol increases networks connectivity and utilizes white spaces efficiently, even without GCC.