A Reliability Aware Protocol for Cooperative Communication in Cognitive Radio Networks

One of the challenging tasks in cognitive radio (CR) networks is to agree on a common control channel to exchange control information. This paper presents a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol for CR network which efficiently and intelligently establishes a common control channel between CR nodes. The proposed protocol is the first CR MAC protocol which is hybrid in nature and lies between global common control channel (GCCC) and non-GCCC family of MAC protocols. The dynamic nature of the protocol makes the CR nodes converge on a newly found control channel quicker whenever the interference from a licensed user is sensed. The analytical results show that the dynamic, hybrid and adaptive nature of proposed protocol yields higher throughputs when compared with other CR MAC protocols.