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ABSTRACT

Establishing a control channel for medium access control is a challenging problem in multi-channel and dynamic spectrum access (DSA) networks. In the design of multi-channel MAC protocols, the use of channel (or frequency) hopping techniques (a.k.a. parallel rendezvous) have been proposed to avoid the bottleneck of a single control channel. In DSA networks, the dynamic and opportunistic use of the available spectrum requires that the radios are able to "rendezvous" -- i.e., find each other to establish a link. The use of a dedicated global control channel simplifies the rendezvous process but may not be feasible in many opportunistic spectrum sharing scenarios due to the dynamically changing availability of all the channels, including the control channel. To address this problem, researchers have proposed the use of channel hopping protocols for enabling rendezvous in DSA networks.

This paper presents a systematic approach, based on quorum systems, for designing and analyzing channel hopping protocols for the purpose of control channel establishment. The proposed approach, called Quorum-based Channel Hopping (QCH) system, can be used for implementing rendezvous protocols in DSA networks that are robust against link breakage caused by the appearance of incumbent user signals. We describe two optimal QCH systems under the assumption of global clock synchronization: the first system is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the time-to-rendezvous between any two channel hopping sequences; the second system is optimal in the sense that it guarantees the even distribution of the rendezvous points in terms of both time and channel, thus solving the \emph{rendezvous convergence} problem. We also propose an asynchronous QCH system that does not require global clock synchronization. Our analytical and simulation results show that the channel hopping schemes designed using our framework outperform existing schemes under various network conditions.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.2 Network Protocols

General Terms:
Algorithms, Performance

Keywords:
channel hopping, cognitive radio, control channel, dynamic spectrum access, medium access control, quorum system