Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are composed of mobile users who can use multiple spectrum bands for communication. CRNs allow unlicensed users (called cognitive users) to efficiently utilize unused licensed spectrums without interfering with communications of licensed users (called primary users). The main goals of CRNs are to mitigate spectrum saturation and to improve spectrum utilization. This paper introduces state-of-the-art routing protocols for CRNs and addresses some limitations of these protocols. To resolve the limitations, we suggest a new research direction for routing protocols in CRNs. We implement our protocol to compare with the existing routing protocols for multi-hop CRNs. Our protocol shows good performance compared to the existing routing protocols in terms of network performance and PU protection.