An efficient MAC protocol for improving the network throughput for cognitive radio networks

Abstract

The limitation of spectrum has become a major bottleneck of the development of next generation radio system. One of the key challenges of the emerging opportunistic cognitive radio is how to utilize unused spectrum holes efficiently without interference to incumbent system. Assuming that channel status is known, in this paper, we propose a decentralized adaptive medium access control (AMAC) protocol that has no dedicated global common control channel (CCC) and can utilize available resources efficiently. In AMAC, each cognitive radio maintains channel status table and indexes them frequently. The channel that has more probability to be stable is ranked channel one. The most reliable common channel between communicating pair is selected as a CCC. We proposed two data communication mode according to the channel condition. The simulation results show that the proposed decentralized adaptive medium access control (AMAC) protocol significantly increases cognitive radio networks (CRNs) connectivity and data throughput. © 2009 IEEE.