Conditionally Randomized Channel Selection Algorithm for Multi-Channel MAC Protocol in Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that uses non-overlapping multiple channels, called the multi-channel MAC protocol, was proposed in order to increase the capacity of ad hoc networks. Since the number of packet interfaces on each node is less than the number of channels in ad hoc networks in general, the node needs to select a suitable channel for data transmission. This means that the multi-channel MAC protocol must be provided with a good channel selection algorithm. In this paper, we design a channel selection algorithm called Conditionally Randomized Channel Selection (CRCS) based on Extended Receiver Directed Transmission (xRDT) protocol that only uses one packet interface. Briefly, CRCS uses the acitve channel for data transmission until the amount of data packets reaches a threshold, at which point it selects one of the available channels other than the active channel. Although CRCS is a very simple channel selection algorithm, by using network simulator we find that CRCS is effective to increase the capacity of ad hoc networks and to keep the load balance of all channels compared to the other channel selection algorithms.