Cognitive radio (CR) technology will have significant impacts on upper layer performance in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In this paper, we study topology control and routing in CR-MANETs. We propose a distributed Prediction-based Cognitive Topolo
gy Control (PCTC) scheme to provision cognition capability to routing in CR-MANETs. PCTC is a midware-like cross-layer module residing between CR module and routing. The proposed PCTC scheme uses cognitive link availability prediction, which is aware of the interference to primary users, to predict the available duration of links in CR-MANETs. Based on the link prediction, PCTC constructs an efficient and reliable topology, which is aimed at mitigating re-routing frequency and improving end-to-end network performance such as throughput and delay. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
