A MAC protocol supporting Dynamic Control Channel for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

MAC protocol is the key technology in cognitive radio networks. Exchanging control messages and updating available channels are the important parts of the MAC protocols in cognitive radio networks. In this paper, we propose a novel MAC protocol supporting Dynamic Control Channel (DCC- MAC). DCC-MAC can adaptively choose a optimal channel from multiple available channels, which avoids to using a dedicated control channel that is difficult to maintain in cognitive networks. A model is built to analyze the throughput of DCC-MAC under the saturation condition. The analysis and simulation results show that DCC-MAC improves the spectrum utilization in cognitive networks.