Analysis of Random Access Protocols for Multi Channel Wireless Networks

Random access techniques have traditionally been used for the design of efficient medium access control protocols for wireless networks where the entire bandwidth is provided to the users as a single channel to be accessed for communication. In this paper we analyze the broadcast performance of several random access techniques in a multi channel system, where users can dynamically access portions of the available bandwidth at a given time and location. In order to compare these protocols we focus on metrics of interest such as the receiving probability, the system throughput and the network blocking probability. Our results show that these protocols can offer significant improvements in terms of increased system throughput provided that their operational parameters are carefully tuned to achieve near-optimal behavior in a multi channel setting.