Investigating the challenges of Dynamic Spectrum Access in Cognitive Radio-enabled Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (CR-VANETs)

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is an emerging application of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) with a wide range of safety and non-safety applications. Data communication in VANETs is challenging due to its high mobility, short link lifetime, and frequent network fragmentation. These challenges demand efficient spectrum utilization for ensuring reasonable network performance. The use of Cognitive Radio (CR) can facilitate efficient spectrum utilization by Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA). Besides, it allows the vehicles to use an existing road-side network infrastructure without interfering its users. In this paper, we investigate the challenges of designing efficient DSA techniques for CR-VANETs. We provide numerical simulation results to delineate the possible challenges of DSA in CR-VANETs. In addition, we highlight the features that a DSA algorithm must have to achieve good network performance. Finally, we point out the detailed procedure of evaluating the performance of DSA algorithms in CR-VANETs using discrete-event simulation.