Abstract
Secondary user (SU) mobility, primary user activity, and spectrum sensing inaccuracy are the main challenges to the stability of a quality of service (QoS) route in cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs). In this work, a new routing protocol for CRAHNs, referred to as the route stability based multipath QoS routing protocol (SMQRP), is proposed. The proposed protocol finds the optimal primary and alternative paths between an SU source and an SU destination and guarantees the use of the optimal primary and alternative channels along the paths. A proposed routing metric (SMQ) used for path and channel decisions is applied to the proposed protocol. The main idea is to use different routing metrics to select QoS paths with higher stability. The SMQRP was compared in this category with other routing protocols and was evaluated based on CRAHNs parameters. The results of the simulations show significant improvements with respect to the average end-to-end delay, packet drop probability, and throughput.