Throughput-Optimal Cross-Layer Design for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

We present a distributed, integrated medium access control, scheduling, routing and congestion/rate control protocol stack for cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs) that dynamically exploits the available spectrum resources left unused by primary licensed users, maximizing the throughput of a set of multi-hop flows between peer nodes. Using a network utility maximization (NUM) formulation, we devise a distributed solution consisting of a set of sub-algorithms for the different layers of the protocol stack (MAC, flow scheduling and routing), which result from a natural decomposition of the problem into sub-problems. Specifically, we show that: 1) The NUM optimization problem can be solved via duality theory in a distributed way, and 2) the resulting algorithms can be regarded as the CRAHN protocols. These protocols combine back-pressure scheduling with a CSMA-based random access with exponential backoffs. Our theoretical findings are exploited to provide a practical implementation of our algorithms using a common control channel for node coordination and a wireless spectrum sensor network for spectrum sensing. We evaluate our solutions through ns-2 MIRACLE-based simulations. Our results show that the proposed protocol stack effectively enables multiple flows among cognitive radio nodes to coexist with primary communications. The CRAHN achieves high utilization of the spectrum left unused by the licensed users, while the impact on their communications is limited to an increase of their packet error rate that is below 1 percent.