  In this paper, we propose an adaptive Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol
for full-duplex (FD) cognitive radio networks in which FD secondary users (SUs)
perform channel contention followed by concurrent spectrum sensing and
transmission, and transmission only with maximum power in two different stages
(called the FD sensing and transmission stages, respectively) in each
contention and access cycle. The proposed FD cognitive MAC (FDC-MAC) protocol
does not require synchronization among SUs and it efficiently utilizes the
spectrum and mitigates the self-interference in the FD transceiver. We then
develop a mathematical model to analyze the throughput performance of the
FDC-MAC protocol where both half-duplex (HD) transmission (HDTx) and FD
transmission (FDTx) modes are considered in the transmission stage. Then, we
study the FDC-MAC configuration optimization through adaptively controlling the
spectrum sensing duration and transmit power level in the FD sensing stage
where we prove that there exists optimal sensing time and transmit power to
achieve the maximum throughput and we develop an algorithm to configure the
proposed FDC-MAC protocol. Extensive numerical results are presented to
illustrate the characteristic of the optimal FDC-MAC configuration and the
impacts of protocol parameters and the self-interference cancellation quality
on the throughput performance. Moreover, we demonstrate the significant
throughput gains of the FDC-MAC protocol with respect to existing half-duplex
MAC (HD MAC) and single-stage FD MAC protocols.
