10236 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 66, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2017
TABLE I I
S
UMMARY OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS
Symbols & abbreviations Explanation
DoR Degree of rendezvous
MTTR Maximum time-to-rendezvous
MCTTR Maximum conditional time-to-rendezvous
ATTR Average time-to-rendezvous
CL Channel loading
DS Relaxed cyclic difference set
MDS Minimal DS
NRDS Non-relaxed DS
UDDS Union of disjoint DSs
UDMDS Union of disjoint MDSs
CQS Cyclic quorum system
Z
n
The set of integers modulo n
Jump-Stay (EJS) [22], and Channel Rendezvous Sequence
(CRSEQ) [20] avoid utilizing the ID sequences of CUs for the
construction of CH systems. However, they work inefficiently
when neighboring CUs have heterogeneous channel resources
and hence are only suitable for a limited environment. To im-
prove the rendezvous efficiency for CUs with heterogeneous
spectrum resources, the Interlocking CH (ICH) [31], Heteroge-
neous Hopping (HH) [32], Conversion Based Hopping (CBH)
[33], and Single-radio Sunflower-Sets-based (SSS) rendezvous
[25] allow each CU to only hop among its locally available chan-
nels for blind rendezvous. These CH systems, however, suffer
from various constraints of each CU, e.g., sensing ability, lack
of other CUs’ IDs, and the agility of channel availability.
In summary, as mentioned by [15], the gap between the theo-
retical lower bound on the MCTTR of symmetric asynchronous
CH systems and the best known MCTTR of the existing CH
systems with an arbitrary DoR, i.e., CRSEQ, is still very large.
In view of this, the present paper proposes the UDDS-based
Asynchronous CH (UDDS-ACH) to concurrently afford an ar-
bitrary DoR and approach the theoretical lower bound on the
MCTTR more closely than all known symmetric asynchronous
CH systems.
III. T
HE PROPOSED TWO SYMMETRIC CH SYSTEMS
To solve (*), this section first formulates the concept of UDDS
and then describes the construction algorithm for UDDS-SCH
and -ACH based on this concept. For the simplicity of descrip-
tion, Table II summarizes all symbols and abbreviations to be
adopted in the remaining of this paper.
A. Union of Disjoint Difference Sets
Definition 1: A subset {a
0
,a
1
,...,a
k−1
} of Z
n
is called a
relaxed cyclic (n, k)-difference set or an (n, k)-DS in short if,
for each d ∈{1, 2,...,n−1}, there exists at least one ordered
pair (a
i
,a
j
) subject to a
i
− a
j
= dmodn.
Definition 2: Let A be a k-element set {a
0
,a
1
,...,a
k−1
}⊆
Z
n
. Then the rotation of A by the distance i ∈ [0,n− 1],
denoted by ROT (A, i), means the set {a
0
+ imodn,a
1
+
imodn,...,a
k−1
+ imodn}. In particular, A = ROT (A, 0).
Corollary 1: If a k-element set A ⊂ Z
n
is an (n, k)-DS, so
is the set ROT (A, i) ∀i ∈ [1,n−1].
For example, the set A = {0, 1, 3}⊂Z
6
is a (6, 3)-DS
because 1 ≡ 1 − 0 mod 6, 2 ≡ 3 − 1 mod 6, 3 ≡ 3 − 0 ≡ 0 −
3 mod 6, 4 ≡ 1 − 3 mod 6, and 5 ≡ 0 − 1 mod 6. So are the
5 rotations of A, i.e., ROT (A, 1)={1, 2, 4}, ROT (A, 2)=
{2, 3, 5}, ROT (A, 3)={3, 4, 0}, ROT (A, 4)={4, 5, 1}, and
ROT (A, 5)={5, 0,
2}.
As shown by [16], when the parameter k of an (n, k)-DS
is fixed, the parameter n will be upper bounded by k
2
− k + 1.
This fact, together with k ≥ 2, implies t hat k>
√
n for all (n, k)-
DSs. In particular, when k approaches
√
n as much as possible,
an (n, k)-DS is further called an (n, k)-minimal difference set
or an (n, k)-MDS in short.
Meanwhile, the following concept is closely related to DS:
Definition 3: A subset {a
0
,a
1
,...,a
β −1
} of Z
n
is called
an (n, β, λ)-non-relaxed difference set or an (n, β, λ)-NRDS in
short if, for each d ∈{1, 2,...,α− 1}, there exist exactly λ
ordered pairs (a
i
,a
j
) subject to a
i
− a
j
= dmodn.
Thus an (n, β, 1)-NRDS is an (n, β)-MDS, but not vice
versa. While (n, k)-DSs do exist for all n ≥ 2, it is known
that (n, β, λ)-NRDSs only exist for some special n ≥ 2, e.g.,
n = β
2
− β + 1 with β − 1 being a prime and λ = 1 [34]. As an
(n, k)-MDS contains the minimum number of elements among
all DSs and NRDSs over Z
n
,wehave
Corollary 2: The size β of an (n, β, λ)-NRDS will always
be not smaller than the size k of an (n, k)-MDS.
Definition 4: A cyclic quorum system,oraCQS in short,
over Z
n
is a group of the n subsets U
0
, U
1
, ..., U
n−1
of Z
n
,
which satisfies the following two properties:
(1) U
i
∩ U
j
= ∅∀i, j ∈ [0,n−1];
(2) U
i
= ROT (U
0
,i) ∀i ∈ [0,n− 1].
Thus a CQS {U
0
,U
1
,...,U
n−1
} should satisfy the rotation
closure property, i.e., ∀i, j, h ∈ [0,n− 1], ROT (U
i
,h) ∩ U
j
=
∅. The following theorem quotes from [16]:
Theorem 1: The group of nk-element sets A, ROT (A, 1),
..., ROT (A, n − 1) form a CQS over Z
n
if and only if A is an
(n, k)-DS.
Proof: First, if A = {a
0
,a
1
,...,a
k−1
} is an (n, k)-DS, we
shall prove that ROT (A, x)
ROT (A, y) = ∅∀x, y ∈ [0,n−
1]. Denote by b
x,l
and b
y,m
, respectively, the l
th
element
of ROT (A, x) and the m
th
element of ROT (A, y), where
l, m ∈ [0,k− 1]. Thus b
x,l
= a
l
+ xmodnand b
y,m
= a
m
+
ymodn. By Definition 1, whenever A is an (n, k)-DS, there
should exist some l and m such that a
l
− a
m
= y − xmodn
or, equivalently, b
x,l
− b
y,m
= 0 mod n. This, together with
b
x,l
∈ Z
n
and b
y,m
∈ Z
n
, implies that b
x,l
= b
y,m
and hence
ROT (A, x)
ROT (A, y) = ∅.
Next, to show that the inverse is true, we shall prove it
by contradiction. Assume that ROT (A, x)
ROT (A, y) = ∅
and A is not an (n, k)-DS. Thus there should exist at least
one d ∈{1, 2,...,n−1} such that a
i
− a
j
= dmodn∀i, j.
Note that, because b
d,l
= a
l
+ dmodn and b
0,m
= a
m
,we
have b
d,l
− b
0,m
= a
l
− a
m
+ dmodn. However, the fact
ROT (A, 0)
ROT (A, d) = ∅implies the equality b
d,l
= b
0,m
for some l and m. This leads to a
m
− a
l
= dmodnfor some l
and m, which contradicts the initial assumption.