Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
DOI 10.1007/s12083-014-0308-9
A channel-hopping scheme for continuous rendezvous and data
delivery in cognitive radio network
Yen-Wen Chen & Po-Yin Liao & Ying-Cheng Wang
Received: 17 April 2014 / Accepted: 19 August 2014
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract The purpose of cognitive radio (CR) technology is
to improve spectrum utilization. In recent years, dynamic
spectrum access (DSA) has become one of critical researches
for achieving improved transmission performance in CR. A
rendezvous algorithm facilitates a connection between a pair
of secondary users (SUs) to achieve peer to peer transmission
in CR environment. Most researchers have adopted the ren-
dezvous degree and the time to rendezvous (TTR) as key
factors to design rendezvous algorithms. However, the occur-
rence of a primary user (PU) can shield off the rendezvous
even when both SUs occupy the same channel. A complete
peer to peer transmission process in cognitive radio network
(CRN) provides not only rendezvous for SUs but also channel
access for data transmission under priority usage of PU. This
paper proposes an algorithm to achieve shift-based channel
hopping for continuous rendezvous (SCHCR) to guarantee
that each SU can rendezvous continuously with its receiver
within the upper bound of the expected TTR without a cen-
tralized control mechanism. This continuity property facili-
tates rendezvous, particularly when PUs exist. Based on the
rendezvous algorithm, this paper further proposes a threshold
controlled skip (TCS) scheme and two policies for the occur-
rence of PU to resolve channel contention and data transmis-
sion problems. Simulation results indicated that the proposed
schemes achieve shorter rendezvous time, particularly when
the load of PU is high, and facilitate superior transmission
performance.
Y.<W. Chen (*) : P.<Y. Liao : Y.<C. Wang
Department of Communication Engineering, National Central
University, Jhongli, Taiwan, Republic of China
e-mail: ywchen@ce.ncu.edu.tw
P.<Y. Liao
e-mail: dreamilylife@gmail.com
Y.<C. Wang
e-mail: eric3724135@gmail.com
Keywords Cognitive radio . Rendezvous . Dynamic
spectrum access . Peer to peer
1 Introduction
The recent lack of radio resources has primarily been caused
by the rapid growth of mobile services. Generally, unlicensed
radio bands can be freely utilized; however, transmission
quality cannot be guaranteed because of poor management.
In licensed bands, spectra are divided into segments and
deployed using various wireless technologies to achieve ap-
propriate management [1, 2]. Although licensed band users
can exclusively utilize the allocated radio resources, it intro-
duces low utilization of the spectrum. According to the statis-
tics of the FCC, spectrum usage is between 15 % and 85 %
from the time and space domain [3, 4]. The unutilized spec-
trum is regarded as spectrum hole. Consequently, cognitive
radio (CR) technology is proposed to enhance the spectrum
utilization of licensed spectra. The CR end device has the
capability of sensing spectrum holes and it can use them under
the constraint of not affecting licensed users; however, CR end
devices are autonomously operated with loose management.
Contention and collision among end devices injure valuable
radio resources. In recent years, dynamic spectrum access
(DSA) has become a critical problem in achieving superior
transmission performance in CR networks (CRNs). In CRNs,
two types of user exist: primary users (PUs) and secondary
users (SUs). Traditionally, if a spectrum has already been
deployed for licensed users, license-exempt users are unable
to use the spectrum even if the PU is inactive. However, in
CRNs, an SU can temporarily use an unused spectrum to
transmit data by scanning for and detecting the absence of
PU in that spectrum channel. One of the research directions of
CRNs is facilitating peer-to-peer communication through ef-
fective use of spectrum holes. Theoretically, an n-channel

CRN can provide up to n pairs of simultaneous peer-to-peer
communication if no PU is active in the spectrum; however,
both sender and receiver SUs can communicate with each
other only when they reside in the same channel and no
interference is caused by PUs or other SUs. Therefore, the
rendezvous algorithm is necessary for a sender and receiver to
meet at the same channel before transmitting data. The per-
formance of the rendezvous algorithm is typically evaluated
based on its time to rendezvous (TTR) and the number of
possible rendezvous channels, which is also regarded as the
channel overlapping degree. The algorithm should minimize
TTR and provide a guaranteed rendezvous time. Ideally, the
rendezvous of any pair of secondary users is spread across all
available channels.
Rendezvous approaches are categorized into two branches:
aided and unaided rendezvous systems [5]. In aided rendez-
vous system, the SU rendezvous procedure is managed by a
centralized controller, such as a fusion center (FC) or base
station (BS). In the unaided rendezvous approach, the SU can
either use a common control channel (CCC) to exchange
information to achieve rendezvous [68] or perform its own
process to achieve blind rendezvous without the assistance of
CCC. The CCC-based approach is conceptually similar to the
aided system except that it can arrange multiple control chan-
nels to avoid the single failure point problem. However, the
problem of control channel contention and signaling overhead
should be carefully considered. The blind rendezvous ap-
proach does not require a control channel to accomplish
rendezvous; thus, it has no overhead in the rendezvous proce-
dure. Heuristic mechanisms are necessary to achieve the ren-
dezvous of an SU pair; however, guaranteeing a rendezvous
within a limited time is difficult. Because PUs have higher
priority to use a channel than SUs do, the appearance of a PU
blocks the rendezvous of an SU pair even when both SUs are
in the same channel. Furthermore, a PU can interrupt ad hoc
communication even when both SUs have already achieved a
rendezvous in the same channel and started data transmission.
Thus a complete CR-based ad hoc communication mecha-
nism should not only provide a rendezvous scheme but also a
channel access scheme for data transmission. The appearance
of PU is also an unavoidable problem for both schemes. This
paper proposes a novel algorithm to achieve shift-based chan-
nel hopping for establishing continuous rendezvous (SCHCR)
for a sender SU to rendezvous with a receiver SU. The
proposed SCHCR algorithm facilitates SU rendezvous in all
channels in consecutive time slots, which greatly minimizes
the variance of TTR except when all channels are occupied by
PUs, compared with existing schemes. In addition, this paper
also proposes a threshold controlled skip (TCS) contention
algorithm for achieving effective transmission after
rendezvous.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Sec-
tion 2 introduces related studies of rendezvous in CR
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
environments. Section 3 presents the system architecture and
proposes the SCHCR algorithm for consecutive rendezvous.
The TCS-based contention mechanism and two policies are
also provided to accomplish the data transmission of the SU
rendezvous pair. The experimental results are illustrated in
Section 4 and discussions are provided. Finally, Section 5
offers a conclusion.
2 Related works
Generally, rendezvous approaches can be classified into four
types: dedicated-control, single-control, multiple-control, and
no-control channels [5]. The dedicated control channel be-
longs to the aided rendezvous system, and requires a central-
ized control mechanism to achieve rendezvous. As men-
tioned, aided systems suffer certain drawbacks. For unaided
rendezvous schemes, the adaptive multiple rendezvous con-
trol channel (AMRCC) for CR ad hoc networks was proposed
[6]. The authors designed an adaptive hopping sequence to
avoid PU interference. Their hopping sequence was based on
a ranking table, which was predicted using the periodical
sensing experience of SUs. When a pair of SUs, a sender
SU and a receiver SU, achieve rendezvous, they exchange
information, including a SYNC packet and a ranking table to
synchronize in the following hops. The sender SU and receiv-
er SU can compute a common hopping sequence through the
exchanged information. Although the AMRCC provides a
low-overhead rendezvous procedure, its performance primar-
ily depends on the historical statistics of PU; furthermore, it
ignores the collision issue in its analysis, which can be im-
practical, particularly when the behavior of PU is irregular. In
[7], the authors proposed a distributed coordination protocol
for establishing a common control channel (DCP-CCC) to
construct a common channel cluster tree for the management
of clusters in large scale network topology. However, in [8],
the cluster size using the same CCC was not limited; therefore,
the overall system might require an additional common con-
trol signal overhead when the loading of the primary system is
heavy. In the other unaided rendezvous scheme, the blind
rendezvous scheme, no specific control channel is required,
no control overhead is incurred, and no Achilles heel exists to
jeopardize the operation of the rendezvous procedure. How-
ever, a sender SU requires an implicit method to locate the
receiver SU. The concept of channel hopping is widely
adopted in blind rendezvous algorithms and the design of a
hopping sequence is a critical factor that affects TTR and the
overlapping degree.
In [9], the authors proposed a cooperation framework for
asynchronous channel hopping, however, it might introduce a
high cooperative signaling overhead when cooperative neigh-
bors increase. In [10], the authors proposed an array-based
quorum system and analyzed its property with random
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
rendezvous time. The probability of successfully achieving
blind rendezvous is low. In [11], the authors expressed that
specific rules are critical to guarantee the rendezvous of a pair
of SUs within a time limit for practical applications. In [12],
the authors proposed a general message passing based frame-
work, which maintains and exchanges rendezvous informa-
tion among SUs, to accelerate rendezvous process. Further-
more, the authors proposed an efficient greedy channel
switching algorithm for efficient rendezvous of both single-
hop and multi-hop networks. The role-based parallel sequence
(RPS) assumed that SUs can be equipped with more than one
wireless transceiver to improve the rendezvous perfor-
mance by using multiple radios [13]. In [14], the au-
thors proposed a novel short-sequence-based (SSB) ap-
proach and presented an analysis of the benefits of short
periodic channel hopping sequences in the rendezvous
process. The sequence in SSB is based on discrete segment
which is arranged from the set of all available channels. The
SUs start the rendezvous process from the one extreme to the
other extreme. Once reaching the end of the segment, SUs hop
to the opposite path.
The sequence-based rendezvous scheme was proposed to
guarantee rendezvous within a given time limit [15]. In their
approach, the SU seeks its receiver through channel hopping.
The order of the channel-hopping sequence is known to the
SU in advance. To achieve rendezvous in an asynchronous
environment, the SU inserts a permutation channel into the
channel sequence of each hopping round. The example pre-
sented in Fig. 1 indicates that a CRN comprises four channels
and the permutation and channel order are {2, 1, 3, 4}. Thus,
the arrangement of the original sequence is {2, 1, 3, 4, 2, 1, 3,
4, , 2, 1, 3, 4}. After the insertion of the permutation
channel, the hopping sequence of the sender SU becomes
{2, 2, 1, 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 3, 4, 4, 2, 1, 3, 4}. Although
the sequence-based approach proposed in [15] can
achieve rendezvous, it only considers rendezvous for
two SUs; the contention of multiple SUs and interfer-
ence from PUs are not considered. These two problems
(i.e., channel contention and the appearance of PU) play
critical roles in transmission performance. These two
problems were considered in the present study and the
proposed scheme provides a complete peer-to-peer transmis-
sion process, which includes the rendezvous state and the data
transmission state, in a CRN.
Fig. 1 sequence-based rendezvous approach [15]
3 The system architecture and proposed
target-sequence-based rendezvous scheme
The proposed peer-to-peer CRN framework [18] consists of
two procedures: the SCHCR rendezvous procedure and the
the TCS-based data transmission procedure of SU after a
rendezvous. A brief overview of the system architecture is
presented in Fig. 2. PUs and SUs coexist in a licensed band
wireless network. A PU can utilize the channel if it must send
data to the base station, and an SU can only seek a rendezvous
with its receiver by hopping for spectrum holes among chan-
nels. SUs transmit data until a PU appears. Each channel can
be utilized by only one PU at a time.
The objective of the proposed SCHCR scheme is to provide a
channel-hopping-sequence-based rendezvous mechanism in a
distributed environment without a fusion center or common
control channel. The proposed scheme assumes that the sender
SU can obtain the channel-hopping sequence of the receiver SU
through its hashing function on the unique ID, such as the IP
address or MAC address. This assumption is reasonable because
the sender SU requires the IP or MAC address of the receiver to
transmit data to a specific receiver. Figure 3 presents the SU
operation of the proposed framework. Normally, each SU has its
own channel-hopping sequence Peri, and the sender SU switches
its hopping sequence to Seqr to achieve rendezvous with the
receiver for data transmission. Both sender and receiver have the
same hopping sequence for data transmission after rendezvous.
The proposed scheme focuses on the rendezvous and data trans-
mission problems of pairs of SUs caused by PU interference and
channel contention. The SCHCR rendezvous procedure and the
TCS-based data transmission scheme are described as follows.
3.1 Shift-based channel hopping for continuous rendezvous
scheme
To provide asynchronous rendezvous within a limited time,
the shift sequence concept was adopted for channel hopping.
Fig. 2 System Architecture
 Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

is {3, 2, 5, 1, 4} as the original permutation to generate the

hopping sequence of the sender, Seqs, as indicated by (2).

Seqs Per0r ; Per1r ; ; Perkr ; PerrN 1 ; k0; N 1
2

where Per0r is the original permutation of the receiver SU r,

which is {3, 2, 5, 1, 4} in the aforementioned example, and
Perkr denotes the k-times left-rotated sequence of the original
permutation sequence Per0r . Because Seqs consists of the
original permutation sequence and the N1 left-rotated se-
quence, the length of Seqs is N2. The detailed sequence gen-
eration of Seqs is illustrated in Algorithm 1 and an example of
the channel rotation with the aforementioned original permu-
tation is provided in Fig. 4. By using the generated sequence
Fig. 3 Operation States of SU
in Algorithm 1, the basic SCHCR rendezvous procedure is
illustrated in Algorithm 2.
Algorithm 1: Sequence Generation
Each SU was assumed to have a permutation sequence of all
01: sender create a new sequence by re-
available channels. For example, if channels available to the
ceivers permutation
SU are {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}, the permutation of the SU might be {1,
02: define shift(i,permutation) : left
2, 3, 4, 5}, {1, 4, 5, 2, 3}, or any other permutation sequence
shift the permutation by i
of the available channels. A CRN was assumed to comprise N
03: Let N is total channel numbers, and Seq-
channels, and all SUs were assumed to have access to these N
new is the new sequence of sender
channels for peer-to-peer communication. Let Peri be the
04: for i=0 to N-1
permutation sequence generated by the unique characteristic
05: Seq s add permutation of shift(i,
of SU i. Because the permutation sequence has no duplicate
permutation)
channel, the length of each permutation sequence is equal to
06: end for
N, as indicated by (1).
Algorithm 2: SCHCR procedure
Peri fch0 ; ch1 ; ; chi ; ; chN1 g 1 01: When sender needs to rendezvous to
receiver
The channel-hopping sequence is obtained by permuting 02: Sender create a new sequence through
the channel numbers through hashing of the IP address or Sequence Generation in Algorithm 1
MAC address of the SU. Although two SUs can have the same 04: Let N is the length of Seqs, and sender
channel-hopping sequence after hashing, it does not affect the start to channel hopping with Seqs
proposed scheme. Normally, each SU hops its own channel 05: for i=0 to N-1
sequence cyclically. When an SU sends data to another SU, 06: if Seqs[i] is the same as receivers
the sender SU changes the channel-hopping sequence pro- channel in the same time slot
posed by SCHCR to rendezvous with its receiver within 07: break for loop and rendezvous success
limited time. The proposed hopping sequence of the sender 08: end for
SU used to seek the receiver SU r is defined as Seqs. Because
the sender must know either the IP address or the MAC
address of the receiver before data transmission in a peer-to-
peer environment, the sender obtains the hopping sequence of
the receiver. The sender SU cascades N rounds of the re-
ceivers hopping sequence, however, with sequence rotation
for each round. For example, if there are five available chan-
nels, identified as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, in the CRN, and the
channel-hopping sequences of the sender SU and the receiver
SU are {3, 1, 2, 4, 5} and {3, 2, 5, 1, 4}, respectively, after
hashing. When the sender attempts to rendezvous with the
receiver, the sender adopts the receivers permutation, which Fig. 4 The sequence generation mechanism of sender
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

Fig. 5 The rendezvous examples

of the SCHCR with delay 1 and
delay 2 cases

The SCHCR approach also addresses the asynchronous hopping sequence generated by the proposed SCHCR scheme
problem and enables continuous rendezvous between the can guarantee the rendezvous happened within N2 time slots
sender and receiver. This characteristic can increase the prob- in consecutive N different channels.
ability of rendezvous and shorten the rendezvous time, partic- Based on the regular rule of all delay schemes, the average
ularly when PU interference is considered because the pro- time to rendezvous is obtained as
posed scheme allows both the sender and receiver to achieve .
  XN 1
rendezvous in consecutive time slots in distinct channels; E TTRavg D0
D  N 1 D 1
therefore, the rendezvous probability increases. Because the
f0  N 1  N N 1  N N g
sender can switch to Seqs to seek the receiver at any time, a . N 2 N
delay can occur between Seqs and Perr. However, the pro- D 1 1
2
posed Seqs can rendezvous with cyclic Perr consecutively. As
3
indicated by the examples presented in Fig. 5, if the delays of
the sender and receiver are 1 and 2, respectively, and the upper The average time to rendezvous based on various numbers
sequences are Seqs, both sequences can achieve consecutive of channels can be estimated using (3). Another condition,
rendezvous in each channel. degree, defined as TTRdegree which refers to the TTR which
In addition, the SCHCR scheme can guarantee the upper the sender SU and receiver SU can rendezvous consecutively
bound of the TTR under the asynchronous caused by various at how many different available channels. Let K denote the
delays and degrees. Let TTRdegree
delay be the time to rendezvous. degree of rendezvous channel and K {1, 2, 3, , N}; time to
Regarding the condition of delays, TTRdelay depends on the rendezvous with degree K can thereby be derived, which
asynchronous condition. Let D be the delay between the Per0r means that the sender and the receiver achieve rendezvous
of Seqs and the Perr of receiver r when the sender starts the through distinct K channels. For example, if K=3, the sender
rendezvous procedure, where D {0, 1, 2, , N-1}. For and receiver must achieve rendezvous through three distinct
example, if there are N channels and D=0, the TTR0 =0 channels in consecutive time slots. Thus, the average time to
N+1, thus the sender and receiver can rendezvous at the first rendezvous with degree K can be derived as follows:
time slot in the current period without any additional time slots
by asynchronous delay. If D=1 and TTR1 =1N+1, the send-    
E TTRdegree E TTRavg K1
er and receiver must use N time slots to achieve rendezvous.  2 
N N N 2 N
Similarly, if D =N1, the TTR is TTRN1 =(N1)N+1. The 1 K1 K
2 2
SCHCR scheme guarantees sender and receiver to rendezvous
to each other within N2 time slots. The maximum TTR 4
(MTTR) occurs when D is N1, consequently, MTTR =
(N1)N+1. Thus both SUs will start to rendezvous from The characteristic of the proposed approach can be ob-
the (N2 (N1)) -th slot to the N2 -th slot continuously, if there served in (4). In the proposed approach, the average TTR to
is no interference from PU. Lemma 1 provides the proof of achieve the maximum degree is the average TTR in addition
guaranteed rendezvous in the following. to all available channels (i.e., E[TTRdegree]=E[TTRavg]+K).
Lemma 1: The sender hopping sequence generated by This advantage is ascribed to continuous rendezvous for a
SCHCR guarantees to rendezvous with the receiver hopping
sequence within N2 time slots by degree N.
Proof: The sender hopping sequence generated for the
receiver r by SCHCR is the sequence of all possible rotated
sequences of the hopping sequence of receiver r, i.e. Perkr for
0t(N1), to form N2 channel hopping sequence as indi-
cated in Eq. (2). Given the permutation of SUi, Peri with time
shift duration t, 0t(N1), will be the same as the permuta-
tion Pertr. Thus Peqtr Seqs for all t. The total length of Seqs
is N2 and the length of each Perkr equals to N. Hence the sender Fig. 6 Time slot architecture of SU
 Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

Fig. 7 SU options for the appearance of PU (a) option 1: wait scheme, (b) option 2: jump scheme

specific period. The benefit of continuous rendezvous is when
the system is in heavy loading; therefore, the proposed SCHC
R scheme allows SUs to achieve rendezvous in continuous N
time slots with degree K. According to this characteristic, it
was assumed that (N-1) PUs occupy the (N-1) time slots which
comprise the SUs rendezvous time slots. In other
words, SUs only have a time slot to rendezvous and
the condition of rendezvous we define is the worst case
when system is in heavy loading. Thus, an SU fails to
achieve rendezvous only when all channels are occupied
in N consecutive time slots. Let be the number of channels
being occupied by PUs, where {0, 1, 2, , N1 }; the
average TTR with PU interference can then be derived.
Let TTR(PUi(j)) be the average TTR with PU interfer-
ence. The following equation can be obtained by referring
to (3):
 

TTRPU i j PU i j  E TT Ravg
 
1PU i j  E TT Ravg 5 of the channel. SUs can only sense whether a PU occupies a
where PUi(j) is a Bernoulli random variable that refers to
whether PU occupies in channel i at time slot j. The value of
PUi(j) will be 1 if PU occupies. Otherwise, the value will be 0.
For example, if there are total 5 channels SUs rendezvous and
PUs occupy in previous four channels, the value of is 4, the
average TTR with interferences is TTR(PUi(j))= E[TTRavg]+
4. If there is no PU activity, the TTR can be estimated without
PU interference, denoted as TTR(PUi(j))= E[TTRavg]. There-
fore, the upper bound of the average TTR in a high-loading
system can be estimated using (5).
3.2 Threshold-controlled-skip-based channel access and data
transmission scheme
PUs can use channels exclusively whenever they must trans-
mit data. Unlike PUs, SUs must contend for access to a
channel for either rendezvous or data transmission. To appro-
priately utilize channels, the threshold concept is proposed to
differentiate the usage of the channel. PUs have the highest
priority to use a channel and an SU that has achieved rendez-
vous with a receiver can exclusively transmit data in that
channel if a PU is absent. An SU that is seeking rendezvous
contends for a channel, and a sender SU can only verify
whether a receiver SU occupies the channel after it gains
access to the channel. The proposed TCS channel-access
scheme separates the time slot of each channel into the PU
sensing period, the continuity sensing period, and the conten-
tion or data transmission period based on the PU sensing and
continuity sensing thresholds, as presented in Fig. 6. If a PU
must transmit data, it directly transmits data at the beginning
channel in the PU sensing period. If it is sensed that a PU is
absent, the SU, which has already achieved rendezvous with
the receiver in the channel, can then directly transmit data to
the receiver in this channel. An SU that is seeking a receiver
can contend for access to this channel only when it senses no
transmission carriers in the PU sensing and continuity sensing
periods. In this study, it was assumed that each time slot was
10 ms in length and the fast sensing technique of IEEE 802.22
[16], which requires a 1 ms sensing time for PU sensing and
continuity sensing, was applied. When the sender SU achieves
rendezvous with its receiver in channel i, it starts to transmit
data in channel i in the next time slot if there is no PU

Table 1 The simulation schemes

Schemes SCHCR channel TCS with Policy when

hopping continuity SU PU interrupts
mechanism data transmission

CPJ Y Y Jump
CPW Y Y Wait
NC Y N Jump
CPJ_random N (random hopping) Y Jump
CPW_random N (random hopping) Y Wait
NC_random N (random hopping) N Jump
Fig. 8 Efficiency of rendezvous - the average time of SU rendezvous
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
Table 2 The simulation parameters
SU sender and receiver pairs Case 1: 10~60
Case 2: 40
SU avg. data inter-arrival time 50 time slots (exp.)
SU avg. data length 10 time slots / data
PU avg. data inter-arrival time Case 1: 30 time slots (exp.)
Case 2: 10~60 time slots (exp.)
PU avg data length 10 time slots / data
interference. It is clear that no collision occurs in the first two
periods. If either a PU or an SU claims to transmit data in the
channel, it transmits data for the rest of period in that channel
and there is no contention period. For the contention period, to
prevent collisions, the opportunity access request approach is
adopted for SUs in a rendezvous state. Assume that the
contention period of a channel is divided into minislots. Each
SU in a rendezvous state contends for each minislot in a
probabilistic manner. The probability of contending for ren-
dezvous increases when the SU fails to contend for the
minislot. Let Pt denote the probability of the tth contention
period of the SU to issue the contention;
 15: go to next sequence in next time slot
Pt Min Pt ; Pmax 6 The data transmission of a sender SU is interrupted if a PU
where P*t = Pt1 +Pstep, where Pstep refers to the increasing
value after each failed contention. Let P0 = Pinitial, where
Pinitial is the initial contention threshold for the first contention
period. The maximum contention threshold Pmax restricts
within a boundary of succeeded contention probability to
prevent all contended SUs fail to access this channel. After
achieving rendezvous, an SU enters the data transmission state
to transmit data. In this state, the sender continues transmitting
data to a receiver in the rendezvous channel until the occur-
rence of PU interference. Thus, the SU that has transmitted
data in previous time slot in channel i (i.e. the rendezvous
Fig. 9 System throughput v.s.
SU numbers
channel) transmits data in the same channel in current time
slot without contending with other SUs by issuing its role as
the continued SU (C_SU) in the continuity sensing period.
Algorithm 3 presents the proposed TCS-based channel access
scheme.
Algorithm 3: Threshold Controlled Skip (TCS)
Mechanism
01: set threshold = Pinitial
02: if SU is a C_SU
03: SU can ready to transmit data
04: else
05: SU random a number x between 0 and 1
06: while x<threshold
07: if there is no collision detect
08: SU can ready to transmit data
09: else
10: if current frame is finish
11: go to next sequence in next time slot
12: else
13: setting new threshold according to
Eq. (6)
14: SU random a number x between 0 and 1
appears in the transmission channel. In this case, two options
are discussed in this paper. In the first option, as presented in
Fig. 7(a), both sender and receiver SUs continue waiting in the
current channel until the PU leaves and then resume the
transmission. The sender SU can sense the existence of PU
during the PU sensing period. Alternatively, upon the appear-
ance of PU, the sender and receiver SUs leave the current
channel and start to hop channels according to the Perr se-
quence. The predominance of accessing channels in the con-
tinuity sensing period is not applicable in this scenario. Thus,
SUs must contend for access to a channel to achieve rendez-
vous with other SUs, as indicate in Fig. 7(b).

Fig. 10 Channel utilization v.s.
SU numbers
4 Experimental simulations
To investigate the performance of the proposed scheme, the
efficiency of the proposed rendezvous algorithm and the
threshold-based transmission schemes were analyzed through
exhaustive simulations. The TV band was adopted as the radio
environment during the simulations. The 64-QAM modulation
with an inner coding rate of 1/2, which provides 14.24 Mbps
data transfer rate, was adopted for transmission in the channel
[17] and the number of channels in the CRN was assumed to be
10. The simulation results were examined from two perspec-
tives: the efficiency of TTR and data transmission.
4.1 Efficiency of time to rendezvous
The simulation result of the average rendezvous time, which
compares with short-sequence-based (SSB) approach [14] and
sequence-based (SB) approach [15], versus the PU load is
presented in Fig. 8.
Figure 8 presents the average rendezvous time for various
PU loads. The PU appeared in each channel in alternating on/
Fig. 11 Time to rendezvous v.s.
SU numbers
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
off modes. The ratio of the PUs inter-arrival time (off dura-
tion) to service time (on duration) was varied to adjust the PU
load to between 20 % and 80 % in the simulations. It indicates
that the simulation results of the proposed SCHCR scheme
were considerably close to the ideal numerical results obtained
in Eq. (3). It also clearly indicates that, regardless the change
of PU load, the proposed scheme demonstrates more stable
average TTR than that of the SSB and SB schemes proposed
in [14] and [15]. This is mainly due to the characteristic of
continuous rendezvous with degree K in the SCHCR scheme.
It is also noted that the proposed SCHCR scheme achieves
much lower average TTR when the PU load is getting higher.
4.2 Performance of data transmission in cognitive radio
network
Several performance indices of complete ad hoc transmission
in CRN were investigated through exhaustive simulations.
The rendezvous procedure was also included in the simula-
tion. Because the proposed framework provides an SCHCR
scheme, TCS-based continuity sensing for data transmission,
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
Table 3 Comparisons of total
transmission time in time slots No. of SUs 10
CPW scheme 140.848
NC scheme 2235.36
and various policies regarding PU interference of SU data
transmission. Accordingly, the interference of PU and the
contention of SU when accessing the same channel were
considered in the following simulations. In addition, the effi-
ciency facilitated by each characteristic was examined and the
various options of the schemes, as listed in Table 1, were
compared in the simulations.
The number of channels in CRN was assumed to be 10 and
the length of time slot was assumed to be 10 ms. The
contended mechanism parameters of the TCS scheme were
as follows: Pinitial = 0.5, Pstep = 0.1, and Pmax = 0.9. The other
parameters are listed in Table 2. Five simulations were con-
ducted to examine the effect of various parameters on
performance.
(1) Case 1
Figure 9 compares the system throughput of the six ap-
proaches by varying the number of PU pairs. The figure shows
that the NC and NC_random schemes exhibited the lowest
system throughput among all schemes because they did not
adopt the continued mechanism for SU. Consequently, the
SUs had to contend for channel resources in each time slot
which is wasted for collision and, therefore, the SU channel
utilization as considerably low, as indicated in Fig. 10. For the
other four schemes, it indicates that the random-channel-
selection schemes (i.e., CPJ_random and CPW_random) ob-
tained a slightly higher throughput than the SCHCR-based
schemes did when the number of SU pairs was less than 30;
the primary reason is that it is easy to achieve rendezvous with
a receiver when the number of SU pairs is small, as indicated
in Fig. 11.
Fig. 12 System throughput v.s.
mean data inter arrival time of PU
20 30 40 50 60
142.798 142.974 142.451 142.491 143.092
3623.23 4969.58 6493.94 8128.44 10028.6
However, the SCHCR-based schemes achieved higher sys-
tem throughput when the number of SU pairs exceeded 30.
Thus, the proposed SCHCR approach can effectively reduce
the TTR for large numbers of SUs and thereby improve
system throughput. The CPW and CPW_random approaches
demonstrated lower average TTRs compared with the CPI and
CPJ_random approaches because, when a PU appears, an SU
in a data transmission state remains in the channel to wait for
the PU to leave, and therefore SUs do not contend for channel
access, thus alleviating the collision condition. Figure 10
compares the channel utilization of the proposed CPW- and
CPJ-related schemes and the NC-related schemes. In this case,
the average data length and average data interarrival time of
PU were 10 and 30 time slots, respectively. Thus a PU
exclusively utilized 33 % of the total bandwidth. The results
indicated that the utilization of NC-related schemes was below
10 % and the proposed CPW- and CPJ-related schemes can
share approximately half of the total utilization. The CPW
scheme demonstrated the highest utilization among those
schemes because the use of continuity channel access with
the option of waiting in a same channel, effectively preventing
the channel contention overhead. The channel utilization also
saturates approximately 65%, primarily because of the over-
head of rendezvous.
The proposed CPJ- and CPW-related schemes demonstrat-
ed substantially lower TTRs and higher system throughput
than the NC-related schemes did. The CPW and NC schemes
were used as representatives to examine the total transmission
times, as listed in Table 3. The total transmission time was
measured from the sender SUs search for a receiver to the
completion of data transmission. Because the proposed SCHC
R scheme decreases the TTR and the TCS-based scheme gives

Fig. 13 Time to rendezvous v.s.
mean data inter arrival time of PU
the exclusively utilizes the channel in the absence of PU
interference, the CPW schemes achieved a much shorter total
transmission time than the NC scheme did. The total trans-
mission of the CPW scheme was maintained within the range
of 140144 time slots regardless of the number of SU pairs;
the primary reason is that the CPW scheme assigned a higher
channel access priority to SUs in a data transmission state
without incurring contention, except with the interference of
PUs.
(2) Case 2
The appearance of a PU affected the TTR and the trans-
mission performance of SUs. The purpose of the simulation in
this case was to examine whether the proposed scheme can
dynamically adjust resource utilization according to the PU
load. The data interarrival time of a PU was varied to examine
the performance effects of the six schemes. Figure 12 com-
pares the system performance among the schemes. The figure
illustrates that the system throughput of an SU was consider-
ably small when the mean data interarrival time was 10 time
slots. Because, under this condition, PUs generated data every
Fig. 14 Spectrum utilizations v.s.
mean data inter arrival time
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
10 time slots, on average, and the mean data length was also
10 time slots; hence, PUs generated consecutive data in each
channel. Therefore, it was considerably difficult for SUs to
locate spectrum holes for achieving rendezvous and transmit-
ting data. The system throughput of SUs increased when the
mean data interarrival time increased. The NC schemes ob-
tained the lowest system throughput among the six schemes.
This phenomenon is similar to that observed in Case 1 and the
TTR was longer than that in the proposed CPW and CPJ
schemes, presented in Fig. 13. The proposed CPW scheme
exhibited the highest system throughput. In addition to
the advantages of SCHCR and continuous channel ac-
cess, waiting in a channel for PUs to leave reduced SU
contention compared with the CPJ scheme. The spec-
trum utilization of the CPW and CPJ schemes was
further investigated, as indicated by Fig. 14. The results
revealed the PU and SU utilizations of both schemes.
The PU utilization decreased as the mean data interarrival time
increased and the utilization of the proposed schemes
increased accordingly. Thus, in the proposed schemes,
SUs can cooperate with PUs to facilitate peer-to-peer
transmission.
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, the complete peer-to-peer transmission process of
a CRN was discussed. A novel shift-based channel-hopping
scheme for achieving continuous rendezvous of SUs was pro-
posed and the threshold concept was applied to facilitate con-
tinuous data transmission when PUs were absent. In addition to
maximizing the rendezvous degree, the proposed SCHCR
scheme enables consecutive rendezvous time slots in various
channels. Because SUs must avoid PUs even when the sender
and receiver occupy the same channel, this property is helpful
in reducing the average TTR. When compared with other
schemes, the simulation results revealed that the proposed
scheme can stably achieve the aforementioned objective. The
proposed TCS scheme appropriately arranges SUs in a data
transmission state without SU contention when PUs are absent.
Six schemes with various parameters were compared through
exhaustive simulations. The simulation results revealed that the
property of continuous rendezvous in various channels was
more helpful when the PU load was higher. The TCS approach
greatly increased the system throughput and reduced the data
transmission time. The simulation results also revealed that for
SUs in a data transmission state, it is better to wait in the same
channel for a PU to leave. Because the wait policy combined
with the designed continuity sensing period not only assigns
high channel-access priority to SUs in a data transmission state
but also reduces the occurrence SU contention that is in the
rendezvous state. In this study, SUs were assumed to occupy
only one access channel; however, multiple antennas can be
equipped in advanced devices. Devices with more than one
antenna might improve the flexibility of rendezvous in CRNs
(e.g., relay-based rendezvous), and this constitutes a future
research direction.
Acknowledgments This research work was supported in part by the
grants from the National Science Council (NSC) (grant numbers: NSC
98-2221-E-008-063, NSC 99-2218-E-159-001, NSC 100-2221-E-008-
097, and NSC 101-2221-E-159-026), Taiwan, ROC.
References
1. Wang B, Liu KJR (2011) Advances in cognitive radio networks: a
survey. IEEE J Sel Top Signal Process 5:523
2. Dhar S, Ray A, Bera R (2013) Cognitive vertical handover engine for
vehicular communication. Peer-to-Peer Netw Appl 6(3):305324
3. FCC (2003) Facilitating opportunities for flexible, efficient and reli-
able spectrum use employing cognitive radio technologies: Notice of
proposed rule making and order, ET Docket No 03222
4. Akyildiz IF, Lee WY, Vuran MC, Mohanty S (2006) NeXt
generation/dynamic spectrum access/cognitive radio wireless net-
works: a survey. Comput Netw 50:21272159
5. Theis NC, Thomas RW, DaSilva LA (2011) Rendezvous for cogni-
tive radios. IEEE Trans Mob Comput 10(2):216227
6. Cormio C, Chowdhury KR (2010) Common control channel design
for cognitive radio wireless ad hoc networks using adaptive frequen-
cy hopping. Ad Hoc Netw 8:430438
7. Kim MR, Yoo SJ (2009) Distributed coordination protocol for com-
mon control channel selection in multichannel ad-hoc cognitive radio
networks. Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and
Communications (WIMOB), pp. 227232
8. Cormio C, Chowdhury KR (2010) An adaptive multiple rendezvous
control channel for Cognitive Radio wireless ad hoc networks.
Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PERCOM
Workshops), pp. 346351
9. Liu Q, Pang D, Hu G, Zhou X (2012) A neighbor cooperation
framework for time-efficient asynchronous channel hopping rendez-
vous in cognitive radio networks. Dynamic Spectrum Access
Networks (DYSPAN), pp. 529539
10. Bian K, Park JM (2011) Asynchronous channel hopping for estab-
lishing rendezvous in cognitive radio networks. IEEE INFOCOM,
pp. 236240
11. Silvius MD, Ge F, Young A, MacKenzie AB, Bostian CW (2008)
Smart radio: spectrum access for first responders. Proc. SPIE 6980,
Wireless Sensing and Processing III, 698008, pp. 112. doi:10.1117/
12.777678
12. Jia J, Zhang Q (2013) Rendezvous protocols based on message
passing in cognitive radio networks. IEEE Trans Wirel Commun
12(11):55945606
13. Yu L, Liu H, Leung YW, Chu X, Lin Z (2013) Multiple radios for
effective rendezvous in cognitive radio networks. IEEE Int Conf
Commun, ICC, p. 28572862
14. Reguera V, Guerra EO, Souza RD, Fernandez E, Brante G (2014)
Short channel hopping sequence approach to rendezvous for cogni-
tive networks. IEEE Commun Lett 18(2):289292
15. DaSilva L, Guerreiro I (2008) Sequence based rendezvous for dy-
namic spectrum access. IEEE Intl Symp New Front Dyn Spectr
Access Netw pp. 17
16. Wang YC (2011) The analysis of shift sequence based channel
selection in cognitive radio network. Master Thesis, National
Central University
17. IEEE 802.22 Working Group on Wireless Regional Area Networks.
http://www.ieee802.org/22/
18. ECMA Std. 392 (2009) MAC and PHY for Operation in TV White
Space
Yen-Wen Chen received the Ph.D.
degree in Electronic Engineering
from National Taiwan University of
Science and Technology (NTUST) in
1997. During 1983 to 1998, he
worked at Chunghua Telecommuni-
cation Laboratories, Taiwan and was
a project manager of the broadband
switching systems. From August
1998 to July 2000, he joined the De-
partment of Information Manage-
ment, Central Police University. Since
August 2000, Dr. Chen has joined
the Department of Communication
Engineering of National Central Uni-
versity. Currently, he is a professor. His research interests include broadband
mobile networks, QoS management, sensor networks, network applications,
and multimedia networks. Dr. Chen is a member of the IEEE communication
society.

Po-Yin Liao is a Ph.D. Candidate
in the Department of Communi-
cation Engineering of National
Central University, Taiwan. His
research interests include peer to
peer application, cognitive radio,
and wireless sensor network.
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
Ying-Cheng Wang He received
the M.S. degree in Communica-
tion Engineering from National
Central University in 2012. His
research interests are cognitive ra-
dio and wireless sensor network.