IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol for cognitive radio networks: Cooperative basic access Vs RTS/CTS

In this paper we study the role of control/status channel in MAC protocol of cognitive radio networks. To this end we consider three channel access schemes of IEEE 802.11 DCF namely (i) the Basic Access mechanism that uses no control channel and (ii) RTS-CTS mechanism, that uses a control channel for contention and (iii) cooperative Basic Access scheme that uses a dedicated channel for status update. We calculate and compare different metrics like throughput, mean delay, dropped packets etc of secondary users through extensive simulation.