Abstract— Multi-channel hidden terminal due to imperfect CR node synchronization is one of the crucial problems in dynamic channel availability of Cognitive radio ad-hoc networks. Most state-of-the-art CR MAC protocols either use “In-band” or “Out-of-band” overlay based common control channel (CCC) design for network setup, CR co-ordination message exchange and CR node synchronization. With In-band CCC, neighbor discovery and network setup time will be very long especially whenever, available PU free spectrum channels are large in number. Moreover, multi-channel hidden terminal problem and node synchronization cannot be effectively resolved due to link based (sequence) and group based CCC design in opportunistic licensed spectrum bands. With out-of-band CCC, network setup with dedicated licensed or unlicensed channel is relatively fast compared with In-band technique. Subsequently, CR node synchronization problem will be reduced due to network-wide coordination (broadcast) without channel switching delay. But, out-of-band Common control channel is subject to saturation, intruder attacks and may have interference with other wireless services which will severely degrade the performance of CR networks. In this paper, hybrid CCC based MAC protocol is proposed to enhance the performance of the CR network with respect to CR node synchronization, multi-channel hidden terminal and network connectivity time. Experimental results show that the performance of proposed hybrid CCC based MAC protocol is out performed compared with existing In-band CCC-MAC protocols with higher PU free channels and saturated unlicensed out-of band CCC-MAC protocols.
Index Terms— Cognitive radio, common control channel, synchronization, multi-channel MAC.
Satish Anamalamudi and Minglu Jin are with the School of Information and Communication Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China (e-mail: satishnaidu80@gmail.com, mljin@dlut.edu.cn).
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Cite: Satish Anamalamudi and Minglu Jin, " Hybrid Common Control Channel Based MAC Protocol for Cognitive Radio Ad-Hoc Networks," International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 216-224, 2014.