Robust Neighbor Discovery in Multi-Hop Multi-Channel Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces randomized algorithms for neighbor discovery in multi-hop, multi-channel heterogeneous wireless networks, especially focusing on cognitive radio environments with spectrum variability and potential adversarial interference.

Contribution

It proposes novel randomized algorithms tailored for heterogeneous cognitive radio networks, addressing challenges of spectrum variability and asynchronous operation.

Findings

Algorithms effectively discover neighbors in heterogeneous settings

Methods tolerate unreliable channels and adversarial attacks

Applicable to both synchronous and asynchronous systems

Abstract

An important first step when deploying a wireless ad hoc network is neighbor discovery in which every node attempts to determine the set of nodes it can communicate with in one wireless hop. In the recent years, cognitive radio (CR) technology has gained attention as an attractive approach to alleviate spectrum congestion. A cognitive radio transceiver can operate over a wide range of frequencies, possibly scanning multiple frequency bands. A cognitive radio node can opportunistically utilize unused wireless spectrum without interference from other wireless devices in its vicinity. Due to spatial variations in frequency usage and hardware variations in radio transceivers, different nodes in the network may perceive different subsets of frequencies available to them for communication. This heterogeneity in the available channel sets across the network increases the complexity of solving the neighbor discovery problem in a cognitive radio network. In this work, we design and analyze several randomized algorithms for neighbor discovery in such a (heterogeneous) network under a variety of assumptions (e.g. maximum node degree known or unknown) for both synchronous and asynchronous systems under minimal knowledge. We also show that our randomized algorithms are naturally suited to tolerate unreliable channels and adversarial attacks.