Cognitive Wireless Mesh Network Based Media Access Control Technology Research

Cognitive Wireless Mesh Network(CWMN) is a combination of Cognitive Radio (CR)and Wireless Mesh Network(WMN). Cognitive Radio was first proposed by Dr. Joseph Mitola. Cognitive Radio has learning ability and can exchange information with the surrounding environment to perceive the spectrum utilization status around. That is the main feature of Cognitive Radio. Wireless Mesh Network is architecture of the future integration of various networks. Wireless Mesh Network has the features of dynamic self-organization, self-configuration, and self-healing. Moreover, it can be deployed rapidly and easy to maintain. Low cost, good reliability and scalability help to enhance the capacity of the network, connectivity and self-recovery performance. So WMN perfectly meets the needs of next generation wireless network and is an important part of it.Taking advantage of the characteristics of Cognitive Radio and Wireless Mesh Network, the new network organization idea of Cognitive Wireless Mesh Network is proposed. CWMN has the advantages of both CR and WMN. When network nodes communicate with their neighbors, through spectrum sensing and channel optimal allocation, the whole network’s throughput will improve, the communication conflict will be reduced and limited, the situation of communication blocking will be relieved. In addition, the network organization mode of WMN is applied, making the network have the advantage of self-organization and self-configuration.The research of this article focuses on the media access layer of CWMN, and theoretical research and communication simulation about the channel allocation and access in CWMN are shown in the article. Some optimal channel allocation algorithms are proposed. The overall goal is to improve the performance of CWMN, to solve the shortage problem of spectrum resources caused by "hot spots" in the network, and to improve the CWMN’s performance when providing various businesses.The Matlab7.10is used as the simulation environment. The wireless communication model is built in Matlab by programming. In this article, swarm intelligence algorithm——Ant Swarm Algorithm is involved. It is an innovation of this article to apply the Ant Swarm Algorithm to channel investigation and allocation. Moreover, an enhanced idle channel investigation and allocation algorithm is proposed, that is another innovation of this article.There are two simulation schemes. One is the enhanced idle channel investigation and allocation algorithm. Its core idea is idle channel investigation and spectrum switching. The other is ant swarm algorithm based dynamic channel allocation algorithm. Its core idea is self-adaptation and self-adjustment. The swarm intelligence algorithm is applied and the channel occupancy control mechanism is introduced in this scheme. The simulation results show that, two algorithms both have good performance in improving the whole network throughput when application conditions are met.