Title: CH-CSMA-CA: a MAC protocol for asynchronous channel hopping rendezvous in 802.11 DCF-based cognitive radio networks

Authors: Quan Liu; Xiaodong Wang; Xingming Zhou

Addresses: College of Computer Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, China ' College of Computer Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, China ' College of Computer Science, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, China

Abstract: Blind rendezvous paradigm recently expedites the approach to the control channel establishment problem in cognitive radio networks. As a result, many novel asynchronous channel hopping (CH) rendezvous schemes are proposed for realising blind rendezvous in these years. However, how to integrate these asynchronous CH rendezvous schemes with CSMA/CA MAC has not been researched so far. In this paper, we propose a CH rendezvous-based CSMA/CA MAC (named CH-CSMA/CA) to work with existing asynchronous CH rendezvous schemes by tailoring mechanisms of 802.11 DCF to the slotted operation manner of these rendezvous schemes. Moreover, we identify that the channel busy-time inconsistency problem unique to CH-CSMA/CAMAC design is caused by virtual carrier sensing (VCS) mechanism of 802.11 DCF, and an enhanced virtual carrier sensing (EVCS) mechanism is proposed to alleviate its impact on networking performance (i.e., channel access delay and throughput). Extensive simulation results verify the effectiveness of our MAC design.

Keywords: cognitive radio networks; CRNs; blind rendezvous; asynchronous channel hopping rendezvous; control channel establishment; IEEE 802.11 DCF; distributed coordination function; channel busy-time inconsistency; enhanced virtual carrier sensing; EVCS; MAC protocol; medium access control; network performance; channel access delay; throughput; simulation; carrier sense multiple access; CSMA.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAACS.2016.075386

International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems, 2016 Vol.9 No.1/2, pp.71 - 84

Received: 02 Sep 2013
Accepted: 11 Oct 2013
Published online: 19 Mar 2016 *

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