MAC Protocol Design for Spectrum-agile Wireless Networks: Stochastic Control Approach

Widespread deployment of wireless networks under different services including wireless LANs and sensor networks in a shared spectrum has caused many interference and performance issues in dense networks. Specifically, such coexistence poses significant challenges on media access protocol design. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a distributed spectrum-agile MAC (media access control) protocol. It is a multichannel CSMA-based protocol equipped with a dynamic channel selection algorithm. The dynamic channel selection problem is formulated as a multi-armed bandit problem, and the optimal channel selection rules are derived. Finally the advantage of the new protocol is demonstrated through simulation.