Channel Selection for Rendezvous with High Link Stability in Cognitive Radio Network

Channel selection is a fundamental problem in Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs). One basic channel assignment problem is rendezvous, which investigates how secondary users can establish a connection by selecting a common available working channel in the same time slot. Rendezvous is the prerequisite for communication, which however is challenging especially in a dynamic spectrum environment. Link stability is a key factor that benefits the performance of a wireless network. In this work, we study the dynamic channel selection for rendezvous with high link stability. In the centralized case, we propose an algorithm to make as many secondary users as possible to establish stable links. In the distributed case, we derive a novel fast rendezvous strategy in the two-user scenario based on the local idle time of channels. The strategy can be utilized in asynchronous systems. Extensive simulations show that our algorithms have a higher stability in various environments compared with other rendezvous strategies.