Multi-Channel Continuous Rendezvous in Cognitive Networks
Cledson Oliveira de Sousa
MidiaCom Labs, UFF
Niterói, Brazil
cledson@midiacom.uff.br
Ricardo Campanha Carrano
MidiaCom Labs, UFF
Niterói, Brazil
carrano@midiacom.uff.br
ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of wireless networking technologies, the emer-
gence of several new devices that offer or need Internet intercon-
nection, and a pent-up demand for wide band access, especially
away from the big cities, are hampered by the problem of the fre-
quency spectrum exhaustion for telecommunications services. A
more efficient use of the spectrum passes through solutions, such as
the improvement and deployment of radios with cognitive ability.
In this context, the problem of neighbor discovery extends not only
for the initial blind rendezvous, but also for the maintenance of
periodical encounters of neighbors after such initial encounter. At
this stage, it will be necessary for a node that has already found
a peer to interrupt its data communication, so that nodes can be-
come aware of changes in their surroundings and the network can
support the addition of new nodes. The contribution of this paper
is the creation of asynchronous, distributed and robust schedules
to guarantee multiple continuous rendezvous and communication
opportunities between two or more cognitive radios using control
channels, employing frequency hopping with new sequences and
mappings based on combinatorial design theory.
KEYWORDS
Frequency reuse, cognitive radios, multi-channel rendezvous.
ACM Reference format:
Cledson Oliveira de Sousa, Diego Passos, Ricardo Campanha Carrano,
and Célio Albuquerque. 2017. Multi-Channel Continuous Rendezvous in
Cognitive Networks. In Proceedings of MSWiM ’17, Miami, FL, USA, Novem-
ber 21–25, 2017, 8 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3127540.3127552
1 INTRODUCTION
Although we have observed a rapid spread of wireless communica-
tions, we have also witnessed the exhaustion of radio-frequency
spectrum caused, in part, by the lack of flexibility of the licensing
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3127540.3127552
Diego Passos
MidiaCom Labs, UFF
Niterói, Brazil
dpassos@ic.uff.br
Célio Albuquerque
MidiaCom Labs, UFF
Niterói, Brazil
celio@ic.uff.br
model used by government regulation agencies and the pollution of
the wavebands that do not require license for operation, the Indus-
trial Scientific and Medical (ISMs) being the most patent example.
At such frequency bands, forced by circumstances, a multiplicity
of devices are required to operate. Moreover, there are large por-
tions of the spectrum already granted remaining idle, such as in
sparsely-populated regions, or simply not operated due to market
issues [16].
Thanks to significant hardware and software advances in digital
signal processing, there are promising computational solutions that
attempt to solve the spectrum scarcity issue. Among those, we can
cite the Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) and the usage of radios
with cognitive ability, ie., radios that able to dynamically find and
operate opportunistically at idle channels.
This efficiency improvement comes from the frequency reuse,
since Cognitive Radios (CR) are able to scan the spectrum, searching
for those bands that, despite being licensed, remain idle. These are
what are commonly refereed to as white spaces or spectrum holes
[1]. The reuse of such spaces depends on the presence or not of the
licensed Primary Users (PUs), that, due to the dynamics of wireless
environments, changes over time. These changes result in problems
of temporal and spectral diversity. In others words, two unlicensed
secondary users (SUs) that want to communicate, must, without
previous knowledge of spectral occupation or any central aid, scan a
subset of vacant frequencies and find one or more common channels
at a same instant, which constitutes a communication opportunity.
Such problem is commonly called blind rendezvous [20].
Cognitive Radios need to sense the spectrum and vacate the
channel in case of PU detection to protect PUs from harmful in-
terference. To achieve this fundamental feature, CR users usually
share information with each other by using a common medium for
control message exchange. This common medium is known as a
common control channel (CCC) [1].
The single CCC approach, in which only one channel is used
to exchange control messages, is a simple way to guarantee the
control rendezvous and set up future data transmission. Figure 1
illustrates the operating scenario of a single dedicated CCC.
The main disadvantage of the single CCC approach is its suscepti-
bility to the dynamics of the wireless communication environment.
The presence of the PU in the control channel can not only degrade
the overall flow of the SUs’ communication, but if the transmission
period of the PU is long, it may even block access to the channel
for the SUs. Interference or jamming attacks can also disrupt the
SUs’ communication and this behavior can hinder or block the
establishment of new rendezvous. A solution for this situation is
to provide communication in multiple control channels. However
despite facilitating the maintenance of network connectivity, in-
creasing the number of control channels can result in unacceptable
levels of control overhead.
In this work we consider the problem of multi-channel ren-
dezvous by assuming each CR follows a cyclic frequency hop se-
quence, called a schedule, in which it alternates between the data
channel and each of the control channels. Such a schedule must be
constructed in a way that guarantees that any two nodes will have
some overlapping time in each control channel in every cycle.
Figure 1: This example shows a single CCC as a dedicated
control channel visited by secondary users during control
slots. CHAN 1 is occupied by the PU, CHAN 2 and CHAN 3
are dedicated to communication between SUs. The SUs hop
from the CCC to one of those channels during data slots.
Synchronism between nodes would make the overlap of fre-
quency hop sequences trivial, but, typically, cognitive devices are
embedded with inexpensive and inaccurate clocks, which makes
synchronization in cognitive networks a difficult and costly task
[13]. Thereby, we opt to employ an asynchronous approach.
In summary, blind rendezvous is a well studied problem, as seen
in [10, 12, 18], but the continuous multi-channel rendezvous is
scarcely visited in literature. For example, it is mentioned in [3] and
only recently addressed in [6]. In this context, the contribution of
this paper is the proposal of heuristics that can operate on known
schedules for the control channel scenario, and output more robust
multi-channel schedules for continuous time rendezvous with low
control overhead.
This text is organized as follows. In Section 2, we describe the
scenario considered in this paper in more detail. Next, in Section 3,
we introduce theoretical concepts and definitions. Related work is
presented in Section 4. Later, in Section 5, we discuss the concept of
Block Designs, the mathematical basis of our proposed schedules
for continuous rendezvous. The next section details our proposal,
followed by a section presenting an evaluation. Finally, in Section
8, we present our conclusions and ideas for future work.
2 THE SCENARIO
After the first rendezvous, cognitive radios operating as secondary
users must return periodically to the control channel for collabo-
rating, admitting new nodes, exchanging information regarding
the PU activity, and contacting known nodes for establishing new
control or data channels in case a PU becomes present. A subset of
2
the channels already chosen at the first rendezvous could be used
to set up a robust multi-channel schedule and accomplish these
functions through continuous rendezvous.
In our scenario, two or more radios coexist and share the same
licensed band. The licensed spectrum is divided in a set G of or-
thogonal channels, with N of those being control channels, while
one is chosen as a dedicated data channel.
Our schedule will traverse the channels of set G, in fixed size
time slots. All radios operate under the same schedule S, which
is a sequence of v slots, of which k are control slots. Notice that,
although all nodes operate under the same schedule, due the lack
of synchronism, at a given moment of time, the nodes may be in
different slots and therefore, in different channels. Thus, two nodes
operating under the same schedule will likely not rendezvous at
all control slots of a cycle. We define the number of control slots in
which two nodes rendezvous in each cycle λ.
Given two radios R 1 and R 2 equipped with a single half-duplex
radio interface, and programmed with the same schedule S, we
would like to guarantee multi-channel rendezvous in each cycle.
In Figure 2, we present a fragment of a schedule starting at slot
11. These radios rendezvous at two different control slots in each
cycle. All control slot in a schedule S belong to a specific control
set Ki and should be allocated to the respective control channel,
CC0 or CC1 by predefined control sets K 0 and K 1 to guarantee the
rendezvous.
Figure 2: Two radios R 1 and R 2 operating under a same sched-
ule with 59 slots and 29 control slots (Grey). In this example,
there are rendezvous in Cc0 at slot 17, and in Cc1 at slot 20.
There is an offset θ = 1 between the two nodes. The white
slots represent the data slots.
3 DEFINITIONS, TERMINOLOGY AND
METRICS
Typically, in sequence-based CCC approaches, nodes divide time
into cycles, consisting of a sequence of fixed-size control and data
slots, dictated by a schedule, which defines a frequency hopping
sequence [15]. In order to be used in asynchronous CCC, such
schedule should guarantee that any two nodes will rendezvous in
both dimensions, time and frequency, irrespective of their radios’
time offset. In this section, we will present some definitions, ter-
minology and metrics related to these schedules, namely: control
overhead, upper bound rendezvous, Expected Time To Rendezvous
(ETTR), Maximum Time To Rendezvous (MTTR) and Rotation Clo-
sure Property (RCP).
In all definitions and figures, we assume that the slots of the
radios are border-aligned, ie., starting and ending together, which
in fact, would require synchronization. However, as demonstrated
theoretically in [14], with simulations in [3], and experimentally
in [4], if a schedule satisfies a property called Rotation Closure
Property, the alignment between slots is not a requirement for
the rendezvous to occur. Also note that two cognitive nodes pro-
grammed to operate under the same schedule, due to asynchrony,
might actually operate under rotations of the same schedule. Such
rotations are dictated by their internal clock offsets. Schedule rota-
tion is a key factor to understand the RCP, and only by satisfying
RCP, a schedule can deterministically guarantee the rendezvous.
See an RCP definition bellow.
Definition 1. Rotation Closure Property — A schedule S presents
the Rotation Closure Property, if, and only if, the intersection between
itself and any of its rotations has at least one common control slot.
In this paper, we are interested in N multi-channel rendezvous,
which means that a schedule S can also be understood as a set of v
slots and a collection of disjoint sub control sets K = {Ki , K j , ..., K N }.
Thereby, if each sub control set of K satisfies RCP individually, the
schedule satisfies RCP for all N control channels. It is important to
draw attention to the fact that a design is defined as a set together
with a family of subsets whose members are chosen to satisfy some
set of properties [8], and can have several different schedules, with
disjoint control sets or not. We are interested in the disjoint case
here.
In the example shown in Figure 2, radio R 1 operates under a
schedule S with two distinct sub control sets K 0 = {..., 16, 17, 22, ...}
mapped to control channel CC0 and K 1 = {..., 12, 15, 19, 20, ...}
mapped to control channel CC1 . R 2 operates under the same sched-
ule S, but rotated by one slot, ie., θ = 1. Note that K 0 ∩ K 1 = ∅.
Thereby, we want to construct a collection K = {K 0 , K 1 , ..., K N }
∀Ki , K j , Ki ∩ K j = ∅, and all sub control sets of K satisfy RCP
individually.
From these definitions, we determine metrics to measure sched-
ule efficiency. The control overhead is defined as the fraction of
time that each node spends on control channels. The Time To Ren-
dezvous (TTR) for a given pair of nodes is simply the number of
slots elapsed until rendezvous, which is a function of both the used
schedule and the offset between the internal clocks of the nodes.
Since two nodes may present arbitrary clock offsets, more useful
metrics would be to consider the average and worst cases. Thus, we
define the ETTR to be the average TTR, considering all possible
time offsets. Similarly, MTTR is the worst-case TTR for all possible
time offsets.
4 RELATED WORK
Rendezvous approaches can be classified in two main branches,
aided and unaided, and the latter can be divided in synchronous or
asynchronous, and with or without control channels. This section
seeks to situate and compare our proposal and scenario using this
general classification already established in literature, as in [15]
and [20].
Some rendezvous proposals make use of Quorum Systems (QS) to
create control channel-based schedules and to promote rendezvous
in Cognitive Radio Networks (CRN). A Quorum is a set system
where the intersection of any two sets is never null. The rotations
of a schedule based on Quorum Systems are sets of the Quorum.
3
Thus, RCP is guaranteed. However, the proposals in [3], [5] and [17],
are able to guarantee rendezvous for only one channel, not being
applicable for multi-channel rendezvous. Further, such approaches
present high control overhead when compared to Block Designs of
the same length [4].
In SeqR [9], the authors create channel hop sequences by first
selecting a random permutation P of N channels, and repeating it
P(N + 1) times in the sequence, interspersed by each element of P.
For example, for N = 3, and choosing {1, 2, 3} as a permutation of
the channels, we obtain the sequence {1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 2, 3}.
While this mechanism guarantees rendezvous, it does not guarantee
rendezvous in all available channels, which reduces its robustness
against interference and channel occupancy. It is important to no-
tice that SeqR is concerned with the blind rendezvous problem,
instead of the continuous rendezvous considered in this paper. No-
tice that the channel hopping sequences created by SeqR do not
include the data channel. Indeed, SeqR assumes that the rendezvous
is only a concern at an initial setup stage of the network. After that,
nodes are assumed to remain fixed at the data channel. As an illus-
tration, Figure 3 shows an example of a SeqR schedule, highlighting
the rendezvous in channel 2, but failing to provide rendezvous on
channels 1 and 3 in a same cycle.
Figure 3: Example of two nodes A and B operating under a
schedule created with SeqR with offset θ = 2, showing the
case with 2 rendezvous on channel 2.
DRDS in [12] and CRSEQ [18] are also rendezvous mechanisms
that achieve multi-channel rendezvous. They present bounded time
to rendezvous, but are not interested in continuous rendezvous as
our scenario defined in Section 2.
The authors in [6] address the problem of continuous multi-
channel rendezvous and propose a channel-hopping schedule called
Shift-based Channel Hopping for Continuous Rendezvous (SCHCR),
which is based in SeqR, without distinguishing control and data
channels: ie., they assume any channel can be used to send both
data and control information. So far, all the mechanisms mentioned
in this section deal with several ways of creating hop sequences
to achieve rendezvous in bounded time. Some are quorum-based,
others use permutation and others use combinatorial designs, as in
[12], but none uses specifically Balanced Incomplete Block Designs
(BIBD) [21]. In [2], we find for the first time the application of BIBD
for the construction of a rendezvous mechanism in CRANs. The
authors’ proposal concerns data and control transmission, but it
does not use CCC concept, treating all channels as possible opportu-
nities for both, data and control transmissions. It can be noticed that
none of those solutions can be readily employed for the continuous
rendezvous scenario presented in Section 2.
5 BLOCK DESIGNS
Combinatorial design theory deals with the existence, construction
and properties of systems of finite sets, whose arrangements satisfy
general concepts of balance and/or symmetry [8]. The application
of such mathematical framework in our work hinges on the ability
to partition the time into a set of slots divided in two subsets, control
and data slots, such that, two non-synchronized radios operating
under a frequency hopping sequence, defined by these designs, are
guaranteed to have overlapping times at the control slots (ie., they
are guaranteed to rendezvous).
Figure 4: Example of Block Design with a periodic cycle of
7 slots, where there are 3 control slots and 4 slots used for
data transmission. This specific design guarantees one ren-
dezvous per cycle.
We now, briefly introduce the formal definition of a BIBD or
simply Block Designs, adapted for our context, composed of slots
and cycles.
Definition 2. Block Designs — Let v, k, λ ∈ Z+ | v > k ≥ 2.
A Block Design BD − {v, k, λ} is a pair (Y , A) which satisfies the
following properties [11]:
(1) Y is a set of slots of cardinality v that forms a cycle,
(2) A is a collection of two subsets of Y , called blocks,
(3) one block contains k control slots , while the other contains
v − k data slots,
(4) any pair of different blocks must contain λ rendezvous.
So, the relationship between Y , a schedule S and a BD − {v, k, λ},
can be exemplified in the following particular case, which is illus-
trated in Figure 4. Henceforth, for brevity, we will express the BDs
just as {v, k, λ}.
• Example: given Y = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, there is a BD {7, 3, 1},
which has a particular schedule S = [7, {0, 1, 3}], whose
cycle has a total of 7 slots in which 3 control slots are
allocated at positions {0, 1, 3} in the same single frequency,
and data slots are allocated at positions {2, 4, 5, 6}. For any
schedule rotation S®θ of S, there is exactly one overlap per
cycle as depicted in Figure 4, for θ = 1.
Note that there are many other possible designs. Some more
elaborate with λ = 3, 4 and 17 are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Some known more elaborated designs.
BDs Schedules
{15, 7, 3} S = [15, {0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10}]
{19, 9, 4} S = [19, {1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 16, 17}]
{4369, 273, 17} S = [4369, {1, 2, 46, 55, 112, 123, ..., 4344, 4356, 4362}]
Although we use BIBDs as the basis for this work, notice that
they are not trivially applicable to the multi-channel schedules
4
since their blocks specify two kinds of slots (eg., control and data).
In order to adapt block designs to our specific scenario, we propose
heuristics that can start with a block design and output an efficient
multi-channel schedule.
6 OUR PROPOSAL
This paper proposes a set of heuristics that can take one or more
existing designs and generate new designs suitable for providing
multi-channel continuous rendezvous. By systematically employing
those heuristics, we obtain three new kinds of designs, called C-
designs, M-designs and H-designs. The first design arises from
the application of what we refer to as Reverse Engineering (RE),
while the second exploits the concept of Constructive Sum (CS),
our extension of the constructive sum theorem in [11], and the
third combines the first two. We also create the concept of mapping
functions M, which designate which channels will be allocated to
the control slots.
On a scenario where we want to promote multi-channel ren-
dezvous, we can allocate the channels to control slots in many
possible ways, but in the absence of analytic means to prove that
a given a tuple (Design, M, S) provides rendezvous at all channels
within every cycle, for all offsets, we would have to explore all
possible mapping functions. However, in order to reduce the scope
of discovering successful M functions, since the number of possible
schedules grows exponentially with cycle length (N k ), we divided
our mapping functions into two groups:
(1) regular, mapping function that groups 2 < д < k/2 con-
secutive control slots at a same frequency. Notice that there
are schedules where k is not multiple of the group size. In
these cases the remaining slots are allocated on the last
channel; and
(2) irregular, all other combinations that group д control slots
using different frequencies.
Figure 5: Schedule S A with a regular mapping function that
allocates each three consecutive control slots, to the same
control channel, alternating between three control channels
for each group. The mapping used on schedule S B , on the
other hand, is irregular.
As an example of those two distinct mappings, Figure 5 illustrates
two schedules S A and S B , originated from the same BD with λ = 9,
operating respectively, in a regular mapping function that allocates
the same channel Cci for each three consecutive control slots, and
an irregular mapping that does not obey a regular allocation. Notice
that the number of possible irregular mappings grows exponentially
with the number of control slots k. For this reason, in this paper
we will focus on regular mappings, although we intend to pursue a
deeper investigation on irregular mappings in the future.
 Once defined the use of regular mappings to allocate control
slots, the next step is the discovery of a suitable tuple (BD, M, S),
that:
(a) ensures rendezvous on all channels within every cycle
regardless the offset in bounded time,
(b) is efficient in terms of as overhead, ETTR and MTTR.
To verify the feasibility of our designs and schedules, we have
implemented a simulator that generates and tests schedules and
rotations. For each design, the simulator computes the parameters
presented in Table 2. It also implements our heuristics for construct-
ing new designs, and checks the existence of disjoint control sets.
Those functionalities, that will be explained in more details in the
next sections, are illustrated in Algorithms 1 and 2. Both algorithms
use the text_RCP function, which is responsible for testing the RCP
property for each offset and reporting the results.
Table 2: Simulator input parameters and output metrics.
Parameter Description
Design type BD CD, MD and HD
v Cycle length.
k # control slots.
λ # rendezvous per cycle.
overhead % of slots used to control (k/v).
Functions Mk,N ,д used M functions and parameters k, N , д.
RCcn Rendezvous per channel.
ETT R Ccn ETTR per control channel.
MTT R Ccn MTTR per control channel.
Flawed offsets per Ccn Total of failed offset per control channel
6.1 Traditional Block Designs with λ > 1 and
Regular Mappings
BD-based schedules, as in [4] and [7], fit well for neighbor discovery
techniques which employ nodes operating at a single frequency
and require rendezvous only in time dimension. Regular mapping
introduces the idea of grouping a number of consecutive slots allo-
cating them to a same frequency, creating schedules that provides
multi-channel rendezvous.
The first and most didactic example of the application of a regu-
lar mapping function over a Block Design is the schedule obtained
from the BD {59, 29, 14}. A fragment of this schedule is illustrated
in Figure 2. Using a regular mapping function that allocates two
different channels, alternating each two consecutive control slots
to the same frequency, there are rendezvous on both control chan-
nels CC0 and CC1 for all possible offsets. Therefore, this BD-based
schedule obeys the RCP, using this regular mapping M and two
control channels. Nevertheless, this design is not efficient, resulting
in almost 50% of control overhead. In Section 7, we present results
for more efficient designs.
In order to use a more specific and compact notation, from this
point on, we will refer to a regular mapping function that maps k
control slots to N control channels, grouped in д consecutive slots
as Mk, N ,д . Thus, the function employed in the example of Figure
2, can be represented by M29,2,2 . Notice that the regular mapping
function M does not influence the control overhead, since it does
not change the number of control slots.
5
A result of the use of regular mappings to Block Designs is
the emergence of some schedules with redundant control slots.
If we observe the intersection of such a schedule with rotations
of itself, we often notice the occurrence of multiple rendezvous
opportunities per channel and per cycle, while a single opportunity
suffices. The opposite also happens: some mappings do not achieve
rendezvous in all channels in all offsets. So, we create heuristics
to overcome these obstacles, that combine two or more designs,
increase or reduce the number of control slots, in a such a manner
that we obtain more efficient designs in terms of rendezvous and
control overhead.
6.2 Constructive Sum
Based on the concept of disjoint control sets (difference families)
[19] and on the theorem of constructive sum [11], we extend this
theorem for our purposes, proposing a deterministic heuristic we
call Constructive Sum (CS).
If we obtain two designs with the same length v and with two
disjoint control sets K 1 and K 2 , we can create a new design {v, k 1 +
k 2 , (λ 1 , λ 2 )} ∴ |K 1 | = k 1 , |K 2 | = k 2 , which will allow us to ensure
multiple channel rendezvous. Here (λ 1 , λ 2 ) indicates the number
of rendezvous in each of the two different control channels. We
can then apply a new constructive mapping function Mc , that
associates uniquely each slot si ∈ K 1 to CC1 and each slot s j ∈ K 2
to CC2 . Constructive sum is simply a merge of two disjoint control
sets. This property is also valid for n designs.
6.3 Reverse Engineering
Reverse Engineering is a technique that can fix both the cases,
where we have more control slots than required for multi-channel
rendezvous and where we have less control slots than needed. We
present this technique in the form of two distinct heuristics: Subtrac-
tive Reverse Engineering (RE(−) ) and Additive Reverse Engineering
(RE(+) ).
Subtractive RE – The goal is to reduce the overhead. Choose
BD pairs with low overhead e.g. 20% of control overhead. If they
have different cycle lengths, reduce the longest design keeping
the RCP satisfied, so that they match in size. Then we carefully
remove redundant control slots, obtaining, at the end, two disjoint
control sets, without loosing RCP property. Before the first step,
we choose among all rotations of both BDs, that pair which offers
less coincident slots. At the end of these steps, we obtain two more
efficient designs in terms of control overhead with two mutually
exclusive schedules. Algorithm 1 shows the steps for RE(−) .
Additive RE – First, select a BD with low overhead and few
flawed offsets (say k/10) for a N -channel rendezvous through regu-
lar mapping, and then replace data slots with new control slots to
these BD, on failed positions. Run mapping function until there are
no more flawed offsets, so that we have, at the end, a new design,
incurring in only a small increase in the control overhead, but now
satisfying RCP for N -channel rendezvous. Algorithm 2 shows the
steps for RE(+) . We call these evolutions of BDs, C-Designs (CD).
Algorithm 1 : Subtractive Reverse Engineering proceed by reducing the length of S B to match the length of S A
Input: (by eliminating dashed slots), applying the RE(−) heuristic on both
length of BD 1 and BD 2 ◃ used designs schedules, and alternately removing the coincident and redundant
S1, S2 ◃ schedules slots (slots marked with X), until there are no more intersections
K1 , K2 ◃ control sets (which means disjoint control sets), and simultaneously checking,
Output: at each iteration, if there are still rendezvous for all offsets in each
C-Design ◃ new {v, k ′, λ }. schedule. At the end of these steps, we have a C-Design with two dif-
1: adjust BD 1 and BD 2 cycle lengths, testing RCP ferent control sets. Notice that the resulting control sets after RE(−)
2: counter ← 0 are disjoint, and this feature will allow us to use them with another
3: while K 1 ∩ K 2 , ∅ do heuristic: Constructive Sum. The simplest RE case is illustrated as
4: s ← lowest slot in K 1 ∩ K 2 a diagram in Figure 7(a).
5: if counter is even then
6: s ∈ K 1 becomes data slot CD CD
7: counter++ BD RE+
− CD CS
SC
8: else RE+
− RE+
−
9: s ∈ K 2 becomes data slot
10: counter++ CD
11: if test_RCP(S 1 , S 2 ) is False then
12: return fail (a) A CD may be obtained from (b) A CD can be obtained from
13: return (C-design) a BD through additive and the constructive sum of two
subtractive Reverse Egineering CDs.
heuristic.
Algorithm 2 : Additive Reverse Engineering
Input: Figure 7: Figures (a) and (b) show how C-designs, that allow
offsets ◃ check and store failed offsets and slot position. multi-channel rendezvous, may be constructed.
ϕ ◃ threshold of flawed offsets.
Mk, N ,д (A) ◃ apply Mapping function to a schedule A. The idea behind case RE(+) is the opposite of RE(−) . In the first
Output: phase, we search for any failed BD for N -channel rendezvous in
C-Design ◃ new {v, k ′, λ }. few offsets (threshold ϕ), checking failed slots for each offset. Then,
1: while test_RCP(S 1 ) is False AND offsets < ϕ do instead of removing a control slot, we replace some data slot by
2: add control slot in S 1 failed position control slots in the largest gap between two control slots until
3: Mk, N ,д (S 1 ) achieving a successful new Design for N-channel rendezvous. Take,
4: return (C-design) for example, BD {1562, 312, 62}. This specific BD does not have any
regular mapped schedule that reaches 3-channel rendezvous. The
best case achieved through regular mapping is a schedule with 2
flawed offsets (offsets where there are no rendezvous for one or
more control slots ) for CC2 and CC1 . However, replacing 9 data
slots by new control slots, we achieve a CD {1562, 321, 62} that
is successful for 3-channel rendezvous for all offsets. Notice that
we can also combine case RE(−) and RE(+) to form new designs, as
exemplified in the diagram in Figure7(b).

6.4 Heuristics Summary

Figure 6: The process of creating C-Designs, through the ap-
plication of RE(−) in two BDs, showing the removal of sur-
plus slots, eliminating intersection of control slots (marked
with an X), for subsequent use of Constructive Sum, creat-
ing a new C-Design with two meetings each cycle. Note that
a single design like CD {19, 7, ∃1} can have more than one
control set, represented here by K 1 and K 2 .
The example in Figure 6 1 explains RE(−) and CS. Take sched-
ules S A and S B . As, for example BDs {19, 9, 4} and {23, 11, 5}. We
1 We introduce here a new notation (∃1) to the parameter equivalent to λ for BDs.
This means that, after merging, at least one rendezvous per channel per cycle will be
guaranteed, instead of exactly one, as with BDs.
For a matter of nomenclature and better understanding we summa-
rize here the resultant designs of our heuristics:
Merged Designs are obtained by applying Constructive Sum
to two or more Block Designs that present two or more disjoint
control sets. That is the case of BDs {553, 24, 1} and {871, 30, 1},
since both BDs, individually, present two schedules with no control
set intersection. So, we can apply Mc to such schedules forming,
respectively MD {553, 48, (1, 1)} and {871, 60, (1, 1)}.
Hybrid Designs are also formed through Constructive Sum,
but combining two different designs, which is the case of HD
{871, 147, (1, 1, ∃1)}, that is formed by MD {871, 60, (1, 1)}, and a
CD {871, 87, ∃1}.
C-Designs can also be obtained by CS. Schedules formed with
same dimensions, CD {19, 7, ∃1}, but with distinct control sets.
6
Applying the Constructive Sum, and Mc map function forms the will present our results arranging them by design, starting with
schedule S from CD {19, 14, (∃1, ∃1)} with 2-channel rendezvous, the direct application of regular mappings to high λ Block Designs,
ie., at least one slot rendezvous in each channel, for every cycle, dividing in two groups, first, results for 2-channel rendezvous and
regardless of the offset between nodes. Such schedules that present control overhead ≤ 25%, then all results for 3-channel rendezvous.
different number of rendezvous per cycle are known as unbalanced. Later in this section we show the results of our new heuristics.
To enlighten the reader about the number of possibilities and
combinations explored in this paper, we summarize our contribu- Table 4: Table with BD-based schedules that effectively guar-
tions regarding the new designs and their constructions through antee the rendezvous of two radios in two different channels
forming diagrams: Figures 7(a), 7(b), 8(a) and 8(b) show through (overhead ≤ 25%).
those diagrams, the construction of mentioned designs. The label
of the oriented edges indicates the acronym of heuristic employed, v k λ overhead
M
RCc0
ETTR MTTR
RCc1
ETTR MTTR
the forms linked to non-oriented edges indicate the forming de- function C0 C0 C1 C1
341 85 21 0.25 M85,2,2 5.17 41.35 330 5.42 31.41 335
signs. Figures of different blocks linked to oriented end of the edge 677 169 42 0.25 M169,2,2 10.42 60.07 668 10.67 55.73 673
represent the resultant designs. 781 156 31 0.20 M156,2,2 7.79 61.32 765 7.79 53.00 633
1562 312 62 0.20 M312,2,2 15.58 61.32 1556 15.58 53.00 1536

BD BD BD CD
7.1 Results for Block Designs
CS CS
SC
RE+
−
Table 4 shows four different BDs that are able to guarantee ren-
dezvous in two control channels, while incurring in ≤ 25% overhead.
MD HD The table shows the values for v, k, λ, control overhead and the
mapping function M. RCc i indicates the average number of ren-
(a) An MD may be obtained (b) A HD can be obtained from dezvous in a given channel and the ETTR and MTTR in both control
from the constructive sum be- the constructive sum of a BD channels 0 and 1.
tween two BDs. with a CD. Table 5 lists all BD-based schedules that support 3-channel ren-
dezvous (at least 1 each channel per offset). We wish to pursue the
Figure 8: Figures (a) and (b) show respectively how are ob- reduction of the control overhead for multi-channel rendezvous in
tained MD and HD designs, that allow multiple rendezvous. the following sections.
To complete the understanding of the differences between new Table 5: BD-based schedules that guarantee multi-channel
heuristics, designs and their relation to the mapping functions, we (3) rendezvous, with their respective overhead and M func-
present Table 3, showing which mapping functions are used to tions.
generate other designs. The restriction of combinations of these
elements occurs due to the nature of the designs. For example, M M
once a design has been created by constructively summing two v k λ overhead v k λ overhead
functions functions
original designs with preassigned channels, there is no sense in 199 99 49 0.5 M99,3,4 419 209 104 0.5 M209,3,11
using regular mappings. To define in one statement, the regular 251 125 62 0.5 M125,3,4 431 215 107 0.5 M215,3,5
mapping functions are designed to allow multiple rendezvous in 255 127 63 0.5 M127,3,3 439 219 109 0.5 M219,3,10
263 131 65 0.5 M131,3,6 443 221 110 0.5 M219,3,17
designs not built for this purpose, while constructive mappings have
271 135 67 0.5 M135,3,3 463 231 115 0.5 M231,3,12
been created already with the purpose of multi-channel rendezvous 283 141 70 0.5 M141,3,3 467 233 116 0.5 M233,3,12
in mind. 307 153 76 0.5 M153,3,3 479 239 119 0.5 M239,3,3
Table 3: Forming designs, applicable mapping functions and 331 165 82 0.5 M165,3,3 487 243 121 0.5 M243,3,13
347 173 86 0.5 M173,3,3 491 245 122 0.5 M245,3,11
their creating heuristics. 359 179 89 0.5 M179,3,3 511 255 127 0.5 M255,3,10
367 183 91 0.5 M183,3,3 523 261 130 0.5 M261,3,3
Mapping Functions Heuristics 379 189 94 0.5 M189,3,4 587 293 146 0.5 M293,3,13
Regulars Constructive Rev. Engineering Constructive Sum 383 191 95 0.5 M191,3,10 1023 511 255 0.5 M511,3,11
CD X X X X
MD X X
Designs
HD X X 7.2 Results for Reverse Engineering Heuristic
BD X
As already mentioned, Block Designs do not fit well for multi-
channel rendezvous, but we can overcome this difficulty using
7 RESULTS new heuristics to add some particularly positioned control slots
Our numerical analysis tests RCP for all possible schedule offsets with a small increase in control overhead. An example of this new
using any M function, grouping channels from 2 up to ⌊k/2⌋, start- heuristic is the reuse of BD {1562, 312, 62}. This specific BD reaches
ing at the smallest BD {19, 9, 4} up to the longest {4369, 273, 17}. 2-channel rendezvous as seen in the first row of Table 6, which
We have tested possible schedules and their rotations, using these shows, among others parameters, some flawed per offset (2) when
four types of designs: BD, CD, MD and HD. In this process we have applying the M312,3,3 mapping. In this particular case adding 9
found almost 150 schedules to compare and use. To be didactic, we more control slots modifies the original BD. Using this new control
7
 Table 6: Table showing result of employing the Reverse Engineering heuristic on Block Designs.

Flawed Flawed Flawed

M ETTR MTTR ETTR MTTR ETTR MTTR
Type v k λ overhead RC c 0 offsets RC c 1 offsets RC c 2 offsets
function Cc0 Cc0 Cc1 Cc1 Cc2 Cc2
Cc0 Cc1 Cc2
BD 1562 312 62 0.20 M312,3,3 7.05 188.97 1431 0 6.66 190.42 1363 2 7.05 167.93 1482 2
CD 1562 321 (∃1, ∃1, ∃1) 0.21 M321,3,3 7.05 175.01 1412 0 7.46 167.20 1360 0 7.46 156.81 1211 0

Table 7: Table showing results of new designs created by the Constructive Sum heuristic.

Flawed Flawed Flawed

M ETTR MTTR ETTR MTTR ETTR MTTR
Type v k λ overhead RC c 0 offsets RC c 1 offsets RC c 2 offsets
function Cc0 Cc0 Cc1 Cc1 Cc2 Cc2
Cc0 Cc2 Cc2
HD 871 147 (1, 1, ∃1) 0.16 MC 1 434.53 870 0 1 434.53 870 0 8.68 46.11 805 0
MD 553 48 (1, 1) 0.08 MC 1 275.54 552 0 1 275.54 552 0 – – – –
MD 871 60 (1, 1) 0.06 MC 1 434.53 870 0 1 434.53 870 0 – – – –

set, the design is not a BD, but a CD {1562, 321, (∃1, ∃1, ∃1)}, that
satisfies RCP for all 3 control channels.
Through RE(+) heuristic, the number of rendezvous has increased
and ETTR was reduced in both control channels 1 and 2, incurring
only a small increase of 1% in the overhead, comparing to the
original BD. These result are in Table 6.
7.3 Results for Constructive Sum Heuristic
A new hybrid design HD is formed by a constructive sum of two dif-
ferent schedules obtained from the same BD {871, 30, 1}, since it has
two disjoint control sets, that forms a new design {871, 60, (1, 1)}.
This new design is then added constructively to the CD {871, 87, ∃1}
forming an HD {871, 147, (1, 1, ∃1)}. In Table 7, the overhead col-
umn shows for HD, that we reach 16% for 3-channel rendezvous,
which is less than 1/3 of the best results for regular mappings with
BDs. Table 7 also shows metrics of these designs. Still in Table 7, a
design named MD was assembled from the constructive sum of two
BDs {553, 24, 1} with disjoint sets of K, and presents 8% overhead.
MD {871, 60, (1, 1)} that shares the same property of previous BD
achieves 6% overhead. The three schedules shown in Table 7 were
created using MC .
8 CONCLUSION
In this work, we have evaluated two mapping functions, two heuris-
tics, four types of designs and about hundreds of schedules. For all
BDs tested, only the indicated in Table 5, with 50% overhead, offer
guaranteed rendezvous on three different channels for all offsets.
New heuristics for new designs, new mapping functions and differ-
ent combinations of those abstractions were proposed, and novel
schedules were found to guarantee multi-channel rendezvous with
16% overhead for 3-channel rendezvous, as shown in Table 7. Our
schedules achieved control overhead of 6% and 8% for 2-channel
rendezvous. Those promising results encouraged us to continue
in this line of research, and part of our future plans is to reduce
to lower levels the control overhead for multiple rendezvous. Ad-
ditionally, since the ETTR is an important metric for rendezvous
efficiency, our study will also focus on finding designs that reduce
it. We also plan to implement these mechanisms in SDR (Software
Defined Radios), in order to compare our simulated results to real
experiments.
8
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