A vision of energy-efficient routing for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

Cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs) are the ad hoc networks equipped with the intrinsic capabilities of the cognitive radio. As CRAHNs devices are mainly powered by battery, efficient consumption of energy is a key issue in CRAHNs. This paper focuses on energy-efficient routing in CRAHNs. It first compares CRAHNs with mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), surveys the existing energy-efficient routing approaches (TPC and LD approaches) for MANETs, and presents the possibility to apply such two approaches to CRAHNs. It discusses the challenges of energy-efficient routing in CRAHNs, i.e., forwarding route request packets, and designing selection criteria, and then points out how the TPC and LD approaches can be used to ease some of the challenges. Since not all design problems can be solved by applying these two approaches, the paper calls for further research on energy-efficient routing for CRAHNs.