Design and Simulation of Spectrum Access and Power Management Protocol for Dynamic Access Networks

Abstract

This work investigates the problem of managing the transmission power and assigning channels for multi-channel single-radio Cognitive Radio Ad-Hoc Networks (CRAHNs). The considered network consists of M primary users and N secondary users, where the secondary users can use the licensed channels opportunistically when they are not utilized by the primary users. The secondary users have the capability of sensing the licensed channels and determine their occupation status. They are also able to control their transmission power such that the transmitted data can be received with high quality-of-service with the lowest possible transmission power, and minimum interference among the secondary users. This also contributes in increasing the frequency spatial reuse of the licensed channels by the secondary users, when the channels are unoccupied, which increases the network throughput. This work proposes a channel assignment algorithm aims at assigning the unoccupied licensed channels among secondary users efficiently, and a transmission power control aims at tuning the transmission power used by the secondary users to maximize the network throughput. The results show an enhancement achieved by the proposed protocol when it is integrated to the considered network, which is seen through increasing the network throughput and decreasing in the access delay. In this context, the Network Simulator 2 (NS2) was used to verify our proposed protocol, which indicates a significant enhancement in network performance