Two-Hop Polling: An Access Scheme for Clustered, Multihop Ad hoc Networks

In multiple channel environments, clustering provides a convenient framework for channel access and bandwidth allocation. Many clustering schemes, however, demand that terminals may communicate directly only if they share a common clusterhead. This requirement deactivates otherwise helpful links; those between nodes that belong to different clusters (intercluster links). Links between nodes that belong to different clusters constitute a distributed gateway. In this paper, we evaluate the importance of distributed gateways for two different clustering schemes and propose a novel access scheme for clustered environments using the link-cluster architecture, called two-hop polling (2HP). Two-hop polling manages to utilize intercluster links, leading to better connectivity and throughput.