An Asynchronous Neighbor Discovery Algorithm for Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio (CR) technology is a promising emerging technology that enables a more efficient usage of already assigned spectrum. However, before CR networks can be deployed, new algorithms and protocols need to be developed. When forming an ad-hoc cognitive radio network (CRN), one of the fundamental tasks is to determine the neighbors of each node and channels that can be used to communicate among neighbors. The nature of the CRN makes this a challenging problem. Specifically in CRN, not only the network is multi-channel, but the channels available at different nodes may be different. Furthermore no time synchronization may be available to nodes. In this paper, we propose an asynchronous distributed algorithm that allows nodes to discover their neighbors and channels that can be used to communicate with them in a single-hop CRN.