A novel multi-channel MAC protocol with online-prediction for wireless ad-hoc networks

MAC protocols on a single channel are prone to inefficiencies at heavy loads. Multi-channel protocols are expected to achieve improved performance and reduce the wastage of bandwidth. However, "node-offline problem" has been neglected in almost all multi-channel MAC protocols proposed in literatures. In this paper, we analyze several multi-channel MAC protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks and prove that the "node-offline problem" would degrade the performance of these protocols very much. We propose a method called "online-prediction" to solve this problem, and propose a novel protocol based on this method. With this method, nodes detect the status of their neighbors and avoid requesting those off-line nodes. Simulation results show that our protocol performs much better than the former protocols and our method can solve this problem effectively.