MSHCS-MAC: A MAC protocol for Multi-hop cognitive radio networks based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach

Since the concept of Cognitive Radio (CR) was first introduced, it has been considered as a key technology of future wireless devices to better utilize radio spectrum. A number of CR-MAC protocols have been studied for Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), but most state-of-the-art frequencyhopping based protocols focus mainly on channel mobility and spectrum resource allocation. They lack integration of other essential features such as time synchronization and cooperative spectrum sensing, which are practically crucial, into a full-blown CR-MAC protocol. In this paper, we propose MSHCS-MAC: a mac protocol for Multi-hop CRNs based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach which is the cutting edge frequency hopping scheme. The contributions of MSHCS-MAC are threefold: (1) Support of multi-hop communication without dedicated control channel and multiple transceivers, (2) Integration of essential CR-MAC features such as bootstrapping, multi-channel operation, cooperative spectrum sensing and time synchronization, (3) Practical implementation and evaluation on commercial devices. The evaluation results show that MSHCS-MAC provides reasonable performance in the experimental testbed with supporting multihop communication and essential CR-MAC features.