MCR-MAC: Multi-channel cognitive radio MAC protocol for cooperative incumbent system protection in wireless ad-hoc network

MAC protocol design for cognitive radio (CR) should provide access control for unused spectrum without or with minimal interference to primary users. On this basis, considering how to improve the throughput can make CR MAC protocol more meaningful. To achieve these goals, in this paper a TDMA based multi-channel cognitive radio MAC (MCR-MAC) protocol is proposed for wireless ad hoc network that provides for cooperative detection and protection of incumbent systems around communication pair. By mainly focusing on possible signal collisions between incumbent devices and cognitive radio ad hoc devices, any kind of the hidden incumbent terminal problem is handled in our proposed scheme. To this end, a simple but efficient emergency notification exchanging mechanism between neighbor nodes with little overhead is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed MCR-MAC can reduce interference on incumbents greatly and improve the throughput remarkably.