Multichannel reservation MAC protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

A novel multichannel reservation multiple access (MRMA) protocol was presented for efficient channel sharing in mobile ad hoc networks. It employed request-to-send (RTS) and clear-to-send (CTS) dialogue on a common channel and flexibly selected 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 was replied to the sender over another common channel, which effectively eliminated the influence of exposed terminal problem, and the spatial reuse of the same channel was extended to communication pairs even within 2-hops. In addition, the influence of hidden terminal problem was greatly reduced because most of possible packet collisions on a single channel were avoided due to traffic load balance on multiple channels. Finally, performance comparison of the proposed protocol with the IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS protocol was provided, and simulation results show that it outperforms the IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS protocol on total channel utilization and average packet delay.