Multichannel MAC Protocol with Discontiguous-OFDM for Cognitive Radio Networks

Medium access control (MAC) protocols in a cognitive radio network (CRN) are required to increase spectral efficiency and achieve high data rate for secondary users (SUs). Many MAC protocols use a single control channel with a bottleneck problem. In this paper, we propose a multichannel MAC protocol using dicontiguous orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (D-OFDM) in a CRN. Since D-OFDM technology enables SUs to receive multiple packets on discontiguous multiple channels, the proposed MAC protocol adopting D-OFDM has an effect of utilizing multiple control channels, which mitigates the control channel bottleneck problem. Simulations show that the throughput of the proposed protocol outperforms the split phase control channel (SPCC) approach.