Simulation based Evaluation of a Simple Channel Distribution Scheme for MANETs

Abstract

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are special kind of wireless networks with no centralized control. They are ideal candidate for several real world applications where network need to be established on the fly e.g. disaster hit areas, hospitals, military surveillance etc. Researchers have been actively working in this area for a decade or so to make this concept a reality. MANETs differ from conventional fixed networks and therefore pose several challenges to the researchers working in the area. Among many others, access to shared medium is the major problem in MANETs. In such networks MAC layer protocol plays an important role in efficient utilization of shared media in distributed fashion. At the MAC layer we have three contradicting requirements, Maximize channel utilization, Minimize Control overhead and Fairness. Multi-Channel MAC protocols are considered is the most suitable solution to achieve the desired objectives but channel assignment and reservation in a distributed fashion is still a big challenge. In this paper, we have proposed a Multi- Channel scheme to address the problem of channel assignment the proposed scheme is Nodeid based. The proposed Scheme has been compared with conventional single channel scheme using ns-2 simulation and results shows that the proposed technique gives better performance. Keywords- BEB algorithm, Clear to send, Control channels, Dedicated Channels, MAC, Overhead, and request to send.