Abstract
In the paper, an efficient cooperative neighbor discovery framework for cognitive radio ad-hoc networks (CRAHNs) is proposed for future internet of things. Unlike classical ad-hoc networks, users in a CRAHN do not have a pre-allocated set of channels or common control channel (CCC), which makes the situation much more complicated in neighbor discovery. The proposed framework addresses these issues in the absence of a central controller and a CCC, and can discover a large number of neighbors within a limited time. The absence of a CCC necessitates channel hopping to search for new neighbors, which can be time-consuming with a large number of available channels. In the proposed scheme, a node expedites the rate of neighbor discovery by choosing only a subset of available channels for hopping and working in a group. In addition, while working in a group, the nodes are assigned disjoint sets of channels so that different nodes explore different channels at the same time to discover new neighbors. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the random channel hopping scheme which takes whole available channel set to search for neighbors.