A cross-layer study for application-aware multi-hop cognitive radio networks

Satisfying the different requirements of applications is important in multi-hop cognitive radio networks, because the spectrum resources change dynamically and the requirements for various applications could be very different. In this paper, we propose new schemes of channel allocation and route selection for real-time and non-real-time applications to tackle this challenge. Our scheme is flexible so that it can adapt to the different application requirements, and it can provide enough throughput while maintaining the packet loss rate and transmission rate requirements. First, we give the network model in a cognitive radio network environment, and show how to calculate the capacity of the route in multi-hop cognitive radio networks. Second, we formulate optimization problems to fulfill the rate requirements of different applications for each unicast session. We also consider the primary user activities, channel availability, interface and interference constraint. We propose the corresponding routing and channel allocation schemes for different application scenarios. Third, we propose an admission control scheme to study the impact of application requirements for multiple sessions in cognitive radio networks. Finally, we implement simulations to show the performance of our schemes and compare them with existing schemes. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.