Receiver-Based Channel Allocation for Wireless Cognitive Radio Mesh Networks

Empowered by the cognitive radio technology and motivated by the sporadic channel utilization, both spatially and temporally, dynamic spectrum access networks, also referred to as cognitive radio networks, have emerged as a solution to improve spectrum utilization and provide more flexibility to wireless communication. In this paper, we study the channel allocation problem in wireless cognitive mesh networks. For the allocation to be feasible, served mesh clients must establish connectivity with a backbone network in both the upstream and the downstream directions, and must have the SINR (signal-to-interference and noise-ratio) of the uplink and the downlink with their parent mesh routers within a predetermined threshold. We propose a receiver-based channel allocation strategy and show that this strategy outperforms other strategies in terms of the number of mesh clients served, and the fact that no common control channel is needed for coordinating the communication process. Furthermore, we formulate the receiver-based channel allocation problem in wireless cognitive mesh network as a mixed integer linear program (MILP) and propose a heuristic solution.