An evaluation of the effectiveness of cognitive radio ad hoc networks routing protocols

Cognitive radio is a dynamic technology that has a potential of addressing the spectrum scarcity challenge. However, routing in cognitive radio network is a challenge. The availability of the spectrum is probabilistic and it varies from one zone to other. The existing protocols do not guarantee the quality of service requirements for real-time data. Some of the challenges affecting the design of quality of service aware routing protocols are the mobility of nodes, the mobility of the spectrum, and the nondeterministic availability of the spectrum caused by the dynamic environment of cognitive networks. In this study, we use Network Simulator version 2 to evaluate the performance of the routing protocols and present the comparative performance results of these protocols. The simulation results show that the QoS-AODV performs well when there is limited mobility and that it requires improvements in high mobility environments.