Download or read book Multi-channel Medium Access Protocols for Wireless Networks written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As wireless technology becomes increasingly pervasive, there is a need for decentralized medium access control (MAC) protocols that satisfy user requirements at an acceptable cost of complexity and energ consumption. Hardware improvements have provided for multi-channel transceivers and leveraging this benefit necessitates further work in higher layer protocols. As devices get smaller leading to large networks formed of tiny sensor motes, the allocation of available channels without a central authority and their subsequent arbitration is a challenging task. In our work, we address this by first devising a channel allocation protocol (DCA) that ensures interference-free communication. We then propose a multi-channel MAC, C-MAC that enables energy efficient data transfer without tradeoffs in latency or throughput, and allows nodes to remain in their low-power sleep period for the maximum possible time. Apart from sensor networks, we have also analyzed the case for wireless local area networks (WLANs) that are the default providers of community and enterprise level internet connectivity. A judicious choice of the operational channel based on current network conditions can greatly improve performance in randomly deployed or hotspot areas. Our analytical estimation of interference allows each access point (AP) to independently arrive at the best channel, thus resulting in fewer re-transmissions due to neighboring traffic. For all the proposed schemes, a thorough performance evaluation has been undertaken and results reveal major improvement in performance for both WLAN and sensor networks, thus proving the viability of multi-channel communication models.