Dynamic Spectrum Access Using a Network Coded Cognitive Control Channel

Abstract

In this paper we propose a Dynamic Spectrum Access scheme which allows the users to opportunistically and efficiently access the channels available for communications. It addresses the following important aspects of opportunistic spectrum access: 1) implementation of the control channel, 2) multi-channel medium access control, 3) primary user detection, and 4) secondary reuse of spectrum unused by primary users. The main features of the scheme are that it is completely distributed, it does not need dedicated spectrum resources for control purposes, but rather leverages on a virtual control channel which is implemented using Network Coding techniques, and it exploits a cooperative detection strategy to identify unused spectrum. Due to these aspects, our proposal represents a significant improvement with respect to existing Dynamic Spectrum Access solutions. We carry out an evaluation study of the proposed solution to assess its performance with respect to different system and scenario parameters; the obtained results show that the proposed solution is feasible, capable of providing satisfactory performance, and suitable for implementation in real systems

A Survey on Dynamic Spectrum Access Techniques in Cognitive Radio

“…Dynamic Spectrum Access using network coded cognitive control channel [20], allows the users to opportunistically and efficiently access the available channel for communication. Important aspects of opportunistic spectrum access are i) Implementation of the control channel.…”

A scalable Dynamic Spectrum Access solution for large wireless networks

“…The control information disseminated by each user to all the other users in a cluster consists of all the information that is needed to achieve spectrum access coordination, such as the list of intended receivers for each secondary user and possibly the corresponding quality of service requirements. For a detailed description of how NC 4 works, the reader is referred to [4].…”

“…With respect to this issue, in [4] we investigated a simple proof-of-concept channel allocation algorithm which aimed at uniform resource sharing among all users in a single hop network. In [6] we argued that for multihop scenarios more complex resource algorithms need to be considered, in order to provide means for frequency reuse while at the same time addressing the issue of interference among nodes reusing the same frequency.…”

“…In our prior work [4]- [6] we proposed the Network Coded Cognitive Control Channel (NC 4 ) for the realization of multichannel DSA networks. NC 4 addresses in a joint fashion the problems of the common control channel, the multi-channel medium access and the efficient channel allocation, and as such stands as a very promising solution for DSA.…”

Analysis of cognitive radio spectrum access with heterogeneous traffic under buffer constraints

“…In [11], an approach with network coding was viewed as channel sensing to improve channel detectability. In [2], a cooperative detection strategy using network coding was proposed to identify unused spectrum.…”