An Anypath Routing Protocol for Multi-hop Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Compared with traditional Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), designing a routing protocol in Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks (CRAHNs) is more difficult since issues such as the primary user (PU) occupancy problem and the multichannel rendezvous problem must be solved. Any path Routing, a kind of schemes that enables dynamic forwarder selection, seems to be a possible solution to the PU occupancy problem. An any path routing protocol must combine with a multi-channel rendezvous protocol to become a total solution. To the best of our knowledge, there is no any path routing protocol designed for CRAHNs. In this paper, we propose an any path routing scheme in CRAHNs that can be built on top of existing multichannel rendezvous solutions. The objective of the proposed routing solution is to minimize the number of transmissions to deliver a packet. Simulation results verify that the proposed protocol improves network performance when compared with existing CRAHN routing protocols.