Dynamic channel assignment and reassignment for exploiting channel reuse opportunities in ad hoc wireless networks

In Ad Hoc networks, a channel that is occupied by a pair of hosts can be reused by another pair of hosts, only if their communication range is not overlapped. Exploiting the channel reuse opportunities may cause the co-channel interference problem. Two pairs of communicating hosts that use the same channel may be gradually close to each other. A channel reassignment operation should be applied to these hosts for maintaining their communication. This paper proposes a channel assignment protocol so that the channel resource could be highly utilized. A channel reassignment protocol is also proposed for preventing the communicating hosts from co-channel interference owing to mobility. The proposed reassignment protocol efficiently reassigns a new available channel for one pair of hosts that is suffering from co-channel interference. Experimental results show that the proposed protocols provide a larger amount of hosts with communication at the same time and prevent their communication from failure.