High Throughput Spectrum-aware Routing for Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract—Dynamic spectrum networks enable fast deployment of new wireless technologies by effectively utilizing allocated yet unused wireless spectrum. By sensing and utilizing available wireless channels, cognitive radio devices can provide high throughput, low latency communication. Existing schemes for channel assignment suffer drawbacks in throughput and reachability in the presence of location-dependent channel availability. We propose SPEctrum-Aware Routing Protocol (SPEAR), a robust and efficient distributed channel assignment and routing protocol for dynamic spectrum networks based on two principles: integrated spectrum and route discovery for robust multi-hop path formation, and distributed path reservations to minimize interand intra-flow interference. Through simulations and testbed measurements, we show that SPEAR establishes robust paths in diverse spectrum conditions and provides near-optimal throughput and end-to-end packet delivery latency. SPEAR performs extremely fast flow setup and teardowns, and can maintain interference-free flows in the presence of variance in channel availability.