Hiding Switching Delay And

Multichannel multiradio wireless networks allow one to utilize the available spectrum more efficiently to improve network performance. When nodes operate with multiple channels, the contention among the nodes operating in a particular channel is reduced, which translates to more opportunities to transmit and consequently improved throughput. Among the architectures proposed to implement a multichannel network, the hybrid multichannel protocol has been shown to outperform other strategies with respect to throughput. However, there are still some open problems that have not been studied in detail. One of these is how to improve the efficiency of broadcasting, since currently the hybrid multichannel protocol performs broadcasting by flooding on each channel. Another area that has not been studied enough is the benefits of hiding the switching delay. In this thesis we first propose a smart probabilistic protocol for broadcasting in a multichannel multiradio (MC-MR) wireless network, operating with the hybrid multichannel protocol. We present simulation results that show that our protocol can significantly reduce redundant traffic while keeping the delivery ratio at useful levels. In the second part we study the benefits of hiding the switching delay by using two switchable interfaces with the constraint that only one interface can transmit at a time.