Assignment of Roles and Channels for a Multichannel MAC in Wireless Mesh Networks

A multichannel MAC improves throughput in wireless mesh networks by multiplexing transmissions over orthogonal channels. In this paper, we propose an efficient way for constructing the wireless mesh structure associated with Molecular MAC, a multichannel MAC layer designed for efficient packet forwarding. Molecular MAC outperforms other classical approaches, but requires a specific structure for efficient operation. First, we propose a centralized protocol that provides an upper bound for constructing such a molecular structure through a MILP (Mixed Integer Linear Programming) formulation that maximizes network capacity. Then, we present two distributed self-stabilizing heuristic protocols derived from the protocols for constructing respectively a Maximum Independent Set and a Spanning Tree. We compare the performance of the proposed protocols in terms of network capacity and route length.