Performance Comparison of Multi-Channel Protocols for Rate Anomaly Mitigation in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

IEEE 802.11 wireless networks are widely used for flexible network configurations with low-cost. The off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11 devices support multi -channel and multi-rate functionalities. In IEEE 802.11 multi-rate networks, high-rate links experience significant performance degradations when they share the same channel with low-rate links. This is known as rate anomaly problem and various multi-channel protocols are proposed to overcome the rate anomaly problem via channels in IEEE 802.11. In this paper, we compare the existing protocols through simulations, which mitigate the rate anomaly problem by using channels. Also, in order to observe the effect of rate anomaly mitigations by using multiple channels, we also compare them with well-known multi-channel protocols without considering rate anomaly. Through comparison results, we provide the research direction of multi-channel protocol designs for addressing rate anomaly.