New Multichannel MAC Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks

Since wireless ad hoc networks require a distributed multiple access protocol, the medium access control (MAC) layer can be seen as the bottleneck for the throughput in wireless 802.11-based ad hoc networks. In this paper, we develop a new MAC protocol for multichannel operation in wireless ad hoc networks. The proposed protocol is based on the code division multiple access (CDMA) technique where each spreading code represents one channel. However, the proposed MAC protocol is not limited to CDMA systems. It can be applicable within frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems (with one radio transceiver) or multi radio systems. We show through computer simulations that our proposition of multichannel MAC protocol significantly improves the communication performance in wireless ad hoc networks.