Paper Title
A Simulation Testbed for Broadcasting Protocols in Dynamic Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract
Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) have emerging as a promising paradigm to alleviate the spectrum scarcity problem. A large number of protocols have been proposed in CRNs, such as rendezvous protocols that establish a communication link between users, MAC protocols, routing protocols, etc. However, many protocols (such as rendezvous protocols) assume that the spectrum availability keeps stable for a long time, which is an unrealistic assumption. In this paper, we propose a practical model for a dynamic CRN and evaluate various broadcasting protocols under the model. Both users’ geographical location and broadcasting activities are taken into consideration. We implemented a simulation testbed, which can plug-in any broad-casting protocols for CRNs and possesses the ability to configure a plethora environmental settings to meet various requirements. Furthermore, we propose a simple protocol “Cross” on the basis of the model. Through extensive evaluation, various protocols can be easily evaluated in our testbed and “Cross” has a good performance in scalability, throughput and broadcast delay.