Intra-Cell Channel Allocation Scheme in IEEE 802.22 Networks

Cognitive radio based IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area networks have been proposed to harness the highly underutilized sub 900 MHz TV bands. In such networks, both base stations and the consumer premise equipments (CPEs) continuously perform spectrum sensing and transmit only on those channels which are not being used by the primary incumbents. In this paper, we propose a heuristic for an efficient channel allocation by a base station to the CPEs in that cell. Due to the lack of dedicated control channels, the BS and CPEs within a cell go through a process of exchanging control messages on free channels. The benefit of such sharing of their mutual spectrum usage helps the base station make informed decisions on the allocation of uplink and downlink channels to CPEs. This, in turn, guarantees no interference to and from the primary licensed incumbents. For validation of the proposed allocation scheme, we conducted simulation experiments. The results show how the proposed scheme ensures allocation to almost all the CPEs in a cell and how the nature of allocation is dependent on the total number of channels scanned, probability of getting a free channel and number of CPEs in the cell.