A Novel Multi-Channel MAC Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

The medium access control (MAC) protocol, which coordinates channel access between wireless stations, significantly affects network throughput of wireless ad hoc networks. A MAC protocol that is based on a multi-channel model can achieve high throughput by enabling more simultaneous transmission pairs in the network. In this paper, we investigate different designs of multi-channel MAC protocols and classify them according to different negotiation strategies for channel selection. We then propose a novel design by combining the advantages of two different categories. The simulation results show that our proposed protocol can significantly outperform two representative protocols