A multichannel reservation multiple access protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

A novel multichannel multiple access (MRMA) protocol is presented for efficient channel sharing in mobile ad hoc networks. It flexibly employs request-to-send and clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) dialogue on a common channel and selects conflict-free traffic channel to accomplish the transmission of data packet based on a novel channel selection scheme. The acknowledgment (ACK) packet for the data packet transmission is replied to the sender over another common channel, which completely eliminates the influence of exposed terminal problem. The influence of hidden terminal problem is also greatly reduced because most of possible packet collisions on a single channel are avoided due to traffic load balance on multiple channels. In addition, any communication pair within locality can take full advantage of multiple traffic channels without collisions and the spatial reuse of same channel are extended to other communication pair which is at least 2 hops away from them. Finally, performance comparison of the proposed protocol with the IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS protocol is provided, and simulation results show that it outperforms the IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS protocol on total channel utilization, average packet delay and average packet dropping rate.