OSPF-MCDS-MC: A Routing Protocol for Multi-Channel Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

We present an innovative routing protocol that utilizes multiple channels to improve performance in a mobile ad hoe network. The basic idea of the design is to provide nodes with the ability to use multiple channels effectively so that multiple useful transmissions can occur simultaneously, thus improving network capacity. The proposed scheme requires minor changes to existing proactive or table-driven routing protocols and no modifications to current the IEEE 802.11 medium access control protocol. To avoid inefficiencies due to transmission of periodic updates in proactive routing protocols, the proposed scheme divides the network layer into control and data planes. To demonstrate the multi-channel routing scheme, we extend the OSPF-MCDS routing protocol to a multi-channel version, OSPF-MCDS-MC. Simulation results indicate that OSPF-MCDS-MC successfully exploits multiple channels to improve network capacity. The routing protocol allows the network goodput to increase in proportion to the number of available channels, even as the number of nodes and network load increase, in both single-hop and multiple-hop networks.