Spectrum-Aware Routing in Full-Duplex Cognitive Radio Networks: An Optimization Framework

Routing and channel assignment schemes for cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are often designed assuming the half-duplex (HD) transmission capability per user. However, recent advances in full-duplex (FD) communications and self-interference suppression techniques challenge the traditional HD transmission capability, in which FD communication can significantly improve spectrum utilization. In this work, we investigate the routing and channel assignment problem in FD-based CRNs. Two types of FD communications are considered. The first type only allows for simultaneous transmission and reception over different channels, while the second type allows for simultaneous transmission and reception over the same channel. Specifically, for a given cognitive radio (CR) source-destination pair, we first formulate the channel assignment problem for each path between the communicating pair as an optimization problem with the main objective of minimizing the number of distinct assigned channels for that path such that the number of simultaneous active hops across the path is maximized. We show that the optimization problem is a binary linear programming problem, which is, in general, non-deterministic polynomial time-hard. Thus, we present a near-optimal solution based on a sequential fixing procedure, where the binary variables are iteratively determined by solving a sequence of relaxed programs. Accordingly, we develop a novel routing scheme that selects the best path along with the channel assignment such that the highest capacity is achieved. Simulation results are provided, which show that a careful routing and channel assignment scheme for FD CRNs can significantly improve the network performance.