CR-WSN MAC: An energy efficient and spectrum aware MAC protocol for cognitive radio sensor network

Dynamic spectrum access in the form of cognitive radio (CR) has gained traction in wireless sensor networks (WSN) because of a) scarcity caused by the proliferation of wireless devices and service and b) it provides spectrum efficient communication for the resource constrained WSNs. However, proper means have to be devised to satisfy the requirements of both WSNs and CRs and to enjoy the benefits of cognition in sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a novel energy-efficient and spectrum aware multi-channel medium access control (MAC) protocol for the underlying cognitive radio enabled sensor network. We designed a spectrum aware asynchronous duty cycle approach which caters to the requirements of both the domains. The performance of the proposed MAC is evaluated via simulations and analytical methods. The simulation results are also compared with a multi-channel MAC (MCMAC) for WSNs. The comparative results show that the proposed approach outperforms the multi-channel scheme for WSN.