An improved IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol for wireless ad-hoc networks with multi-channel access capabilities

We propose a MAC protocol for multi-hop wireless networks that are capable of multiple channel access. The proposed protocol relies on a common channel to allow the exchange of control messages between the sender and the receiver so as to agree on a channel to use for data transmission. The sender and the receiver then switch to the agreed-upon data channel, and use a mechanism similar to 802.11 to share the channel during data transmission. Using NS-2, we show that the proposed MAC protocol provides significant throughput gains, especially when contention for channel bandwidth is medium.