ROSA: Distributed Joint Routing and Dynamic Spectrum Allocation in Cognitive Radio Ad hoc Networks

Throughput maximization is one of the main challenges in cogni-tive radio ad hoc networks, where local spectrum resources may change from time to time and hop-by-hop. For this reason, a cross-layer opportunistic spectrum access and dynamic routing algorithm for cognitive radio networks is proposed, called ROSA (ROuting and Spectrum Allocation algorithm). Through local control ac-tions, ROSA aims at maximizing the network throughput by per-forming joint routing, dynamic spectrum allocation, scheduling, and transmit power control. Specifically, the algorithm dynamically allocates spectrum re-sources to maximize the capacity of links without generating harm-ful interference to other users while guaranteeing bounded BER for the receiver. In addition, the algorithm aims at maximizing the weighted sum of differential backlogs to stabilize the system by giving priority to higher-capacity links with high differential back-log. The proposed algorithm is distributed, computationally effi-cient, and with bounded BER guarantees. ROSA is shown through discrete-event packet-level simulations to outperform baseline solutions leading to a high throughput, low delay, and fair bandwidth allocation