With the fast proliferation of low-cost and low-power devices, numerous consumer electronic devices have been deployed to create consumer home automation networks (CHANs). In order to improve the quality of service of CHANs, the cognitive radio sensor network (CRSN) has been proposed as a paradigm that utilizes cognitive radio techniques to circumvent the severe interference over the 2.4-GHz band. This article proposes an adaptive preamble sampling based MAC (APS-MAC) protocol, which supports opportunistic spectrum access while addressing the energy conservation in CRSN. A key aspect of APS-MAC is preamble sampling for supporting duty cycling in CRSN. With preamble sampling, each cognitive sensor independently selects its sleep/wakeup schedule, which enables cognitive sensors to be in the sleep mode most of the time. Another feature of APS-MAC is the adaptive spectrum sensing scheme, which allows each cognitive sensor to dynamically adjust its spectrum sensing duration according to transmission outcomes. Because of the self-organizing nature, APS-MAC does not rely on the existence of a common control channel, which is extremely appealing to CRSN. Extensive simulations are performed to validate the performance of APS-MAC.

This work was published on IEEE Sensors Letters,2018,2(1):1-4.titled An Adaptive Preamble Sampling Based MAC Protocol For Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks.