ROPCORN: Routing protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

Routing is one of the most important issues to be addressed and desires deep investigation when dealing with mobile cognitive radio ad hoc networks. Previously proposed routing protocols assume the presence of a connected path from the source to the destination. In some scenarios, due to the characteristics of ad hoc networks and the features of the used cognitive radios, this assumption is likely to be invalid. In this study, a novel routing algorithm for future multi-hop cognitive radio networks is proposed. This paper also presents two routing metrics that suit well to the cognitive radio networks. The main motivation is to maximize data rates and minimize delay for a set of user communication sessions. Experimental evaluations are performed in the ns2 simulator. It has been shown that the proposed approach provides better adaptability to the environment and maximizes throughput in a number of realistic scenarios and outperforms recently proposed routing protocols for cognitive radio networks.