Joint channel assignment and routing protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

Conventional single channel wireless ad hoc networks usually suffer from low network throughput owing to the higher number of packet transmissions required for multi-hop communication. Using multiple channels within a single network can improve the network throughput. In multi-channel communication networks, the channels must be assigned appropriately to maximise network performance. Existing channel assignment methods are usually based on the approach of interference reduction/minimisation, for example, by making a link to operate on only one channel and different links to operate on different channels. In this paper, we go in the opposite direction and propose to make links to operate on more channels. A new distributed joint channel assignment and routing protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks called cognitive radio-enhanced AOMDV is proposed. Simulation studies showed that our method outperforms other methods.