Release-time-based multi-channel MAC protocol for wireless mesh networks

Andy An Kai Jeng, Rong Hong Jan*, Chi-Yu Li, Chien Chen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

The wireless mesh network (WMN) has been considered one of the most promising techniques for extending broadband access to the last mile. In order to utilize multiple channels to increase the throughput in WMNs, a variety of multi-channel MAC (MMAC) protocols have been proposed in the literature. In particular, the dedicated control channel (DCC) approach can greatly simply many design issues in multi-channel environments by using a common control channel to exchange control signals. On the other hand, it allows each sender-receiver pair to dynamically select a data channel for their data transmission in an on-demand matter. However, the common control channel would become a bottleneck of the overall performance. Besides, the selection of data channels would be highly related to the final throughput. In this paper, we propose a new MMAC protocol, named the release-time-based MMAC (RTBM) to overcome the control channel bottleneck and data channel selection problems in the DCC approach. The RTBM consists of three major components: (1) Control initiation-time predication (CIP); (2) Dynamic data-flow control (DDC); (3) Enhanced channel selection (ECS). The CIP can predict a proper initiation time for each control process to reduce control overhead. The DDC can dynamically adjust the flow of each data transmission to fully exploit the channel bandwidth. The ECS can achieve a higher reusability of data channels to further enhance the throughput. Simulation results show that the RTBM can substantially improve the throughput in both single-hop and multi-hop networks.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2176-2195
Number of pages20
JournalComputer Networks
Volume55
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 23 Jun 2011

Keywords

  • Channel selection
  • Medium access control
  • Multi-channel multi-interface
  • Wireless mesh network

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