A novel MAC protocol with on-demand channel assignment for multi-hop mobile ad hoc networks

The mobile ad hoc network (MANET) architecture has received a lot of attention recently. This paper considers the access of multiple channels in a MANET characterized by multi-hop communication. We point out several interesting issues that should be considered when using multiple channels. We then propose a multi-channel MAC protocol, which is characterized by the following features: (i) it follows an "on-demand" style to assign channels to mobile hosts, (ii) the number of channels required is independent of the network topology and the number of neighbors for a mobile host, i.e. the degree of a mobile host, (iii) it flexibly adapts to host mobility and only exchanges few control messages to achieve channel assignment and medium access, and (iv) no form of clock synchronization is required. Compared to existing protocols, some assign channels to hosts statically (thus a host will occupy a channel even when it does not intend to transmit) [4, 13, 16], some require a sufficient number of channels that is a function of the maximum connectivity [4, 10, 13, 16], and some necessitate a clock synchronization scheme among all hosts in the MANET [16, 28]. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed protocol.