AntMAC: A Dynamic Control Channel Selection MAC Protocol Design for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Network

Abstract

In this paper, we present an overview of the work-in-progress on the design of a a newly proposed MAC protocol called AntMAC for Cognitive Radio (CR) application. Our design is aimed at improving the convergence time associated with selection of a control channel for Ad Hoc CR operation. In particular, we adopt the use of the bio-mimicry concept to develop swarm intelligence based mechanism for the selection of control channel in a heterogenous, spatial and time varying spectrum environment, with no pre-existing infrastructure. The long term goal of this work aims at improving Mean Time To Rendezvous(MTTR), throughput, and link utilization as compared to other existing designs.