Rendezvous methods for opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive wireless networks: Analysis and implementation

Opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks is regarded as solution to spectrum scarcity caused by the static allocation of the frequency spectrum. Unlicensed secondary users (SUs) access the spectrum opportunities which are licensed not licensed to them opportunistically without creating harmful interference to the licensed primary users (PUs). In typical wireless communications, to negotiate and establish a link between transmitter and receiver, common control channel is used. However, attackers can identify the common channel and jam it or overhear and misuse the information. In this paper, we present rendezvous processes for dynamic spectrum access in cognitive wireless networks where transmitter and receiver pair meets in a common channel in an ad hoc manner and establish a link for their communications. Rendezvous processes for dynamic spectrum access provides robust link that prevents any security attacks such as jamming, denial-of-service attack, etc. This paper provides comparison of different rendezvous processes and their applicability in cognitive wireless ad hoc networks.