An RTS Based Data Channel Reservations and Access Scheme in Multi-Channel Systems

In Multi-channel systems control packets handshake reserves both control and data channels where a dedicated control channel is implemented. RTS and CTS packets should sense the medium and agree on a specific data channel. The process is long and it wastes resources when there is no agreement. We propose an RTS based channel reservation and access scheme. The CTS agrees with RTS to reserve a specific data channel without sensing the medium to reduce reservation delay. Data channel reservation is done when a data channel is available. The paper first presents a scalable channel switching scheme. Numeric results show that the channel switching scheme is efficient and scalable. Furthermore, the simulation results show that when the utilization of data channels is restricted to seventy-five percent, the RTS based scheme performs better. The seventy-five percent threshold is when the data flows constitute three quarters of the number of the data channels.