Aggregation Aware Spectrum Assignment in Cognitive Ad-hoc Networks

Contiguous spectrum assignment generates many small spectrum fragments that cannot be fully utilized, which leads to low spectrum utilization. With the development of advanced wireless radio technology, especially Discontiguous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DOFDM), discontiguous spectrum access and spectrum aggregation in a single radio has become possible. With the help of discontiguous spectrum access, the small spectrum fragments could be aggregated and further utilized, which can dramatically improve the spectrum utilization efficiency. Based on this observation, we propose Aggregation-Aware Spectrum Assignment (AASA), a spectrum assignment algorithm in cognitive ad-hoc networks. In AASA, we propose a spectrum assignment method that takes spectrum aggregation into consideration. Moreover, we prove that AASA optimizes the spectrum assignment and maximizes the number of users that can be supported in the system. Simulation result shows that AASA significantly increases the spectrum assignment efficiency compared with the existing solutions.