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Channel Access Protocols for Multi-hop

Opportunistic Networks: Challenges and
Recent Developments
Haythem Bany Salameh
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of Arizona


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Outline
Cognitive Radio Overview

MAC Design Challenges

CR Transmission Power Issue

Control Channel Dilemma

Spectrum Access/Channel Assignment Protocols

Conclusions & Future Directions

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The Artificial Spectrum Scarcity
Fixed spectrum allocation
Maximum Amplitudes
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Heavy Use
Heavy Use
Medium Use
Sparse Use
Frequency (MHz)
Inefficient spectrum utilization
Heavily allocated but vastly underutilized (FCC: 15%-85%)
Need new opportunistic & dynamic spectrum allocation/access (DSA) policy
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Cognitive Radio Technology
Cognitive Radio (CR) is key enabling tech. for DSA
Intelligent wireless comm. that is aware of its RF environment & can
adapt its operating parameters accordingly

Main characteristics of CR
Cognitive capability (spectrum awareness)
Enable CR to sense, learn, & adapt based on its RF environment

Cognitive reconfigurability
Enable CR to be dynamically programmed to change its parameter (carrier
freq., bandwidth, power, modulation, etc.)




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Cognitive Radio Network
N primary-radio networks (PRNs) & one opportunistic CRN
CR uses up to M channels









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MAC Design Requirements
Main goal: Design adaptive distributed MAC protocols for
CRNs that allow efficient spectrum sharing without
impacting PRN performance

Good MAC should have the following attributes:
1. Transparent to PRNs (no coordination with them)
2. Guarantees on PRNs' performance
3. Efficient sensing/spectrum assignment decisions
4. Effective distributed coordination for exchanging control info.


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MAC Design Challenges
Key challenges:
Regulating CR TX power: Accounting for CR-to-PR interference
Accounting for uncontrollable PR-to-CR interference
Optimal Ch. assignment for CRNs ( multi-channel design)
Control channel dilemma

PR-to-CR interference
Instantaneous frequency-dependent interference sensing at each
CR (ideal), or
Average interference, or
Randomly modeled PR interference

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Regulating CR TX power
Accounting for CR-to-PR
Static freq.-dependent power mask
Dynamic freq.-dependent mask
1. Binary-level power mask:
(+) Identify & avoid interf. w/ PR trans. (collision-free sharing)
(-) Utilize only idle bands (spectrum efficiency)
(-) Required perfect sensing

2. Multi-level freq.-dependent power mask:
(+) Utilize both idle & partially-utilized bands (improve utilization)
(-) Controlling CR-to-PR interference is nontrivial
(-) Determining appropriate power levels --- open problem


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Determination of Power Mask
Determination of appropriate power mask is important topic

Derive ``time-variant neighborhood-dependant power mask
that provides statistical guarantees on PRs performance

Methodology:
Stochastic models for PR-to-PR and PR-to-CR interference
Use models to guarantee with prob. 1-b no outage due to CR trans
Exploit PRs interference margin & PR local traffic conditions
From IM and measured statistics of PR-to-PR interference, derive a
dynamic power mask vector on CR trans.
At a given time, CR powers set to power mask vector


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Control Channel Dilemma

A reliable mechanism for exchanging control info. is needed
Dedicated unlicensed/licensed CCC:
SIM band
UWB
(+) Simple approach
(-) Contradictory to the opportunistic nature of CRN
(-) Can cause single point of failure & bottleneck problem

Hopping-based control channel:
CR users hop across all ch. accord. to predefined channel-hopping sequence
During hopping, CRs exchange control info. to decides on which chs to use
(+) Overcome the need for CCC
(+) Alleviate bottleneck problem
(-) Synchronization


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Control Channel Dilemma

Local group CC:
Neighboring CR users typically have similar view of spectrum conditions
Grouping is promising for reliable coordination
CR users are clustered into groups
Each group dynamically selects local CCC for exchanging control info.
(+) Accounts for frequency heterogeneity and ch. availability
(+) Overcome the need for CCC

(-) Deployment challenges:
Ensuring connectivity (i.e., different groups adopt different CC)
Determining group sizes & identifying group members
Selecting new good CCC (local CCC re-negotiation is very frequent)

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Existing Spectrum Access Protocols in
CRNs
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Classification Based on Radio-technology
Hardware-based Schemes:
No. of parallel Chs that can be simultaneously used at CR user is
limited by no. of available transceivers
Multi-ch Single-radio (MC-SR):
CR user can only transmit/receive over one Ch. at a time
Multiple-ch multi-radio (MC-MR):
CR can simultaneously utilize multiple Chs
Fixed & limited no. of Chs each with fixed carrier freq. & bandwidth
Provide considerable throughput improvement





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Classification Based on Radio-technology
Software-based Schemes:
SDRs are more powerful & flexible than hardware-based radios
No. of multiple bands that can be used by single SDR >> than MC-MR
Variable spectrum sharing: enable CR comm. w/ variable-width chs & tunable
carrier freq.
Account for spectrum heterogeneity in multi-hop CRNs & improve spectrum utilization
Microsoft introduced variable-width time-spectrum blocks to model
spectrum allocation & formulated the problem as packing of time-spectrum
blocks in time-frequency space such that user rate demands are satisfied

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Classification Based on Ch. Occupancy
Protocol-model
Exclusive Ch. Occupancy (CSMA/CA)
(+) Eliminated CR-to-CR interference
(+) Simplify CR-to-PR interference management
(-) At the cost of CR throughput


Optimal Ch. assignment is NP-hard
Example: proposed heuristic that exploits distance & traffic
awareness for multi-hop mobile CRN


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Classification Based on Ch. Occupancy
Interference-model
Multiple concurrent CR txs in same neighborhood
(+) Improve CR throughput
(-) CR-to-CR & CR-to-PR management is not trivial
(-) Slow protocol convergence (demand distributed iterative power
adjustment of individual CRs)

Example: Fan et. al. proposed distributed price-based iterative
water filling algorithm to allow for multiple CR transmission in same
area (negotiate their transmission powers and channel assignment )



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Summary & Future Directions
We presented broad overview of the key design challenges in
developing efficient MAC protocols for CRNs

We showed that
Dynamic multi-level neighborhood-dependent power mask approach
is good candidate to address the CR tx. power issue
The design of effective coordination scheme is still open problem
Dynamic clustering-based CC is promising to solve CC problem
Variable bandwidth assignment schemes are promising, but their
feasibility and design assumptions need to be evaluated

Although many interesting approaches have been proposed, most of
them only cover subset of challenges related to CRN MAC design

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Questions ?