Vicious Cycle of MAC Protocols of Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks: Problem Statement

In cognitive radio ad hoc networks, secondary users need to exchange control information before data transmission. This task is not trivial in cognitive radio networks due to the dynamic nature of environment. This problem is sometime called rendezvous problem of cognitive radio network. The rendezvous problem is normally tackled by using two famous approaches: the use of common control channel (CCC) and using channel hopping (a.k.a sequence-based protocols). However, these two famous solutions form a vicious cycle while solving the rendezvous problem. The main purpose of this paper is to point out how and why this vicious cycle is formed.