Learning automata based multipath multicasting in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) have emerged as a promising solution to the problem of spectrum under utilization and artificial radio spectrum scarcity. The paradigm of dynamic spectrum access allows a secondary network comprising of secondary users (SUs) to coexist with a primary network comprising of licensed primary users (PUs) subject to the condition that SUs do not cause any interference to the primary network. Since it is necessary for SUs to avoid any interference to the primary network, PU activity precludes attempts of SUs to access the licensed spectrum and forces frequent channel switching for SUs. This dynamic nature of CRNs, coupled with the possibility that an SU may not share a common channel with all its neighbors, makes the task of multicast routing especially challenging. In this work, we have proposed a novel multipath on-demand multicast routing protocol for CRNs. The approach of multipath routing, although commonly used in unicast routing, has not been explored for multicasting earlier. Motivated by the fact that CRNs have highly dynamic conditions, whose parameters are often unknown, the multicast routing problem is modeled in the reinforcement learning based framework of learning automata. Simulation results demonstrate that the approach of multipath multicasting is feasible, with our proposed protocol showing a superior performance to a baseline state-of-the-art CRN multicasting protocol.