Ecology-inspired coexistence of heterogeneous wireless networks

A number of wireless standards (e.g., IEEE 802.11af and IEEE 802.22) have been developed or are currently being developed for enabling opportunistic access in TV white space (TVWS) using cognitive radio (CR) technology. When heterogeneous CR networks that are based on different wireless standards operate in the same TVWS, coexistence issues can potentially cause major problems. Enabling collaborative coexistence via direct coordination between heterogeneous CR networks is very challenging due to incompatible MAC/PHY designs of coexisting networks. Moreover, the direct coordination would require competing networks or service providers to exchange sensitive control information that may raise conflict of interest issues and customer privacy concerns. In this paper, we present an architecture for enabling collaborative coexistence of heterogeneous CR networks over TVWS, called Symbiotic Heterogeneous coexistence ARchitecturE (SHARE). By mimicking the symbiotic relationships (i.e., the interspecific competition process) between heterogeneous organisms in a stable ecosystem, SHARE establishes an indirect coordination mechanism for spectrum sharing between heterogeneous CR networks via a mediator system, which avoids the drawbacks of direct coordination. Analytical and simulation results show that SHARE allocates spectrum among coexisting networks in a weighted-fair manner without any inter-network direct coordination.