A Novel Buffer-Aided Medium Access Control for Multichannel Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper, a novel context aware medium access control scheme is proposed for multichannel buffer-aided cognitive networks. The proposed scheme allows management of the delay more efficiently by exploiting the packets’ context. In the proposed multiple access policy, two different context aware approaches for packet prioritization are presented. In the first method, more delay sensitive packets in the primary and secondary networks are given a higher priority compared to delay tolerant packets. In the second proposed prioritization method, shorter packets in the primary and secondary networks are given a higher priority compared to longer packets and are transmitted over channels with lower service time. The average waiting time of the packets and the primary and secondary throughput are derived. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes improve the average waiting time of packets and average throughput compared to other existing MAC policies in cognitive networks. Received on 20 February 2016; accepted on 1 March 2016; published on 10 January 2017