A Fully Distributed Multi-Channel MAC Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks Based on Location Information

This paper proposes a distributed multi-channel MAC protocol which is an extension of our early work GRID [1]. GRID is characterized by the following features: (i) it integrates a location-aware channel assignment, (ii) it follows an "on-demand" style to access the medium, (iii) the number of channels required is independent of the network topology, and (iv) no form of clock synchronization is required. The proposed protocol wants to further improve the GRID in two parts. First, we propose a fully distributed medium access mechanism without using a single control channel such that all of the network traffic can be distributed evenly over all data channels. Therefore, the network throughput will be increased significantly. Second, we can set the more suitable transmission range and GRID size by considering the factors of host density and packet arrival rate of the network within an specified area. Thus, all of channels will be reused more efficiently than GRID. Simulation results show that the throughput of our protocol is superior to GRID and IEEE 802.11.