Performance of multichannel wireless ad hoc networks

This paper addresses the design of MediumAccess Control (MAC) protocols for wireless ad hoc networks that derive benefits from using multiple orthogonal channels for data transmission. Each node is assumed to have a single half-duplex transceiver that can dynamically select the best channel for transmitting data. We show that even with the same total bandwidth, multichannel MAC protocols can improve the throughput due to two factors – reduction of the number of backoffs during channel access, and increase of the probability of success of transmitted data packets by selecting channels to minimise co-channel interference. We propose multichannel MAC protocols with signal-power based channel selection for achieving these goals and present performance results that show that the proposed protocols can provide significantly higher throughput than that obtained by using the IEEE 802.11 MAC.