L2ER: Low-Latency and Energy-Based Routing Protocol for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs) are active, self-organized, and dynamic networks, in which cognitive users can communicate with each other in an ad hoc fashion. Various delay and energy-based routing protocols have been proposed for CRAHNs. However, these protocols do not consider the delay and node energy in the routing process, which can significantly affect performance. Delay and node energy are important factors in ad hoc networks in which devices have limited power. In this paper, we propose a new routing protocol, named low-latency and energy-based routing (L2ER) protocol; it considers both delay and energy for the routing decisions in CRAHNs. The performances of the proposed protocol are evaluated comparing to two other protocols in terms of average throughput, end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and network lifetime. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol performs better than the existing protocols in many aspects.