Interference Aware Metric-Based Routing Protocol in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are spectrum agile devices capable of changing their communication parameters based on their spectral environment. This capability can be exploited by designing dynamic spectrum access strategies that can utilize the unused spectrum vacated by the licensed users. In this paper, the problem of routing in Cognitive Radio Networks is investigated by exploiting the unoccupied spectrum called Spectrum Opportunities (SOP). An efficient Interference Aware Routing Protocol (IARP) is proposed which can be used to route the data packets between the unlicensed secondary users. The proposed IARP uses an interference aware routing metric (IR) that takes into account the interference in the spectral environment to determine good quality paths between two nodes. The performance of the IARP protocol is evaluated by simulating the CRN under different scenarios. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed routing protocol in delivering high throughput and packet delivery ratio with minimum network latency.