Wireless Pers Commun (2011) 58:565–580 DOI 10.1007/s11277-010-0122-5 On a Distributed Cognitive MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks Kaveh Ghaboosi · Matti Latva-aho · Ryuji Kohno Published online: 11 September 2010 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2010 Abstract A distributed frequency agile medium access control (MAC) extension t IEEE 802.11s for the next generation wireless mesh networks is proposed. The in protocol enhancements are capable of concurrent deployment of existing frequen tunities in order to coordinate simultaneous data transmissions. The root concept based on the deployment of well-known ISM frequency bands, where the legacy 802.11- based wireless equipments operate, as the common control channel in order to establish contemporaneous transmissions. We apply the aforementioned key concept to the IEEE 802.11s common channel framework to attain two important goals: To improve th nel utilization using the concept of cognitive radio, and to lower the access delay. extensive event-driven simulations, taking into account primary user appearance frequency bands, performance of the proposed MAC enhancement is evaluated sh higher efficiency compared to the existing solutions, in addition to its better wire management. Keywords Medium access control · Mesh networks · Cognitive radio 1 Introduction As wireless networks evolve into the next generation in order to offer better servi technology, wireless mesh networks (WMNs), has emerged recently [ 1,2]. In WMNs, nodes K. Ghaboosi ( B) · M. Latva-aho Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC), University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland e-mail: kaveh.ghaboosi@ee.oulu.fi M. Latva-aho e-mail: matti.latva-aho@ee.oulu.fi R. Kohno Division of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Yokohama National University (YNU), Yokohama, Japan e-mail: kohno@ynu.ac.jp 123