Article ID: 2017CQP0022
A multi-channel cognitive radio is a powerful solution for recovering the exhaustion of frequency spectrum resources. In a cognitive radio, although master and slave terminals (which construct a communication link) have the freedom to access arbitrary channels, access channel mismatch is caused. A rendezvous scheme based on frequency hopping can compensate for this mismatch by exchanging control signals through a selected channel in accordance with a certain rule. However, conventional frequency hopping schemes do not consider an access protocol of both control signals in the rendezvous scheme and the signal caused by channel access from other systems. Further, they do not consider an information sharing method to reach a consensus between the master and slave terminals. This paper proposes a modified rendezvous scheme based on learning-based channel occupancy rate (COR) estimation and describes a specific channel-access rule in the slave terminal. On the basis of this rule, the master estimates a channel selected by the slave by considering the average COR of the other systems. Since the master can narrow down the number of channels, a fast rendezvous scheme with a few control signals is established.
