A quorum-based framework for establishing control channels in dynamic spectrum access networks

Abstract

Establishing a control channel for medium access control is a challenging problem in multi-channel and dynamic spec-trum access (DSA) networks. In the design of multi-channel MAC protocols, the use of channel (or frequency) hopping techniques (a.k.a. parallel rendezvous) have been proposed to avoid the bottleneck of a single control channel. In DSA networks, the dynamic and opportunistic use of the available spectrum requires that the radios are able to “rendezvous”— i.e., find each other to establish a link. The use of a dedicated global control channel simplifies the rendezvous process but may not be feasible in many opportunistic spectrum shar-ing scenarios due to the dynamically changing availability of all the channels, including the control channel. To address this problem, researchers have proposed the use of chan