A Path-Centric Channel Assignment Framework for Cognitive Radio Wireless Networks
Todays static spectrum allocation policy results in a situation where the available spectrum is being exhausted while many licensed spectrum bands are under-utilized. To resolve the spectrum exhaustion problem, the cognitive radio wireless network, termed CogNet in this paper, has recently been proposed to enable unlicensed users to dynamically access the licensed spectrum bands that are unused in either temporal or spatial domain, through spectrum-agile cognitive radios. The CogNet plays the role of secondary user in this shared spectrum access framework, and the spectrum bands accessible by CogNets are inherently heterogeneous and dynamic. To establish the communication infrastructure for a CogNet, the cognitive radio of each CogNet node detects the accessible spectrum bands and chooses one as its operating frequency, a process termed channel assignment. In this paper we propose a graph-based path-centric channel assignment framework to model multi-hop ad hoc CogNets and perform channel assignment from a network perspective. Simulation results show that the path-centric channel assignment framework outperforms traditional link-centric approach.
path-centric channel assignment cognitive radio wireless network dynamic spectrum access