CORAL: Spectrum Aware Admission Policy in Cognitive Radio Mesh Networks

Spectrum sensing allows the cognitive radio (CR) devices to determine the presence of licensed users in the chosen spectrum band. Though several sensing methods based on energy detection and cyclostationary feature extraction have been proposed, they fail to account for the location-specific results, and provide no incentive for the node to perform sensing at the cost of its own data throughput. In this work, a node admission policy called CORAL is proposed for CR wireless mesh networks that ranks candidate joining mesh clients (MCs) based on their distinct contributions towards the spectrum sensing coverage area. Moreover, CORAL incorporates different traffic classes, and attempts to keep the higher ranked MCs affiliated to the mesh cluster for longer durations of time. Simulation results reveal improved throughput and enhanced PU protection in the area, in which the licensed and CR users co-exist.