Cross-layer design for spectrum sharing in Cognitive Wireless Mesh Networks

Cognitive radios are expected to improve the capacity of wireless mesh network dramatically. In this paper, we model the channel heterogeneity, which is a unique feature in cognitive radios, and present a cross-layer design framework which jointly considers the spectrum sharing, scheduling and routing with the objective of minimizing the system total activation time, i.e., maximizing the system capacity. An algorithm is proposed to generate all of the system concurrent transmission link-channel sets. Based on that, the optimization framework is simplified to a LP (linear programming) problem, so the global optimal solution could be easily found. Simulation results verify the significant benefit for the cross-layer spectrum sharing in cognitive mesh networks.