TMCMP: TDMA based multi-channel MAC protocol for improving channel efficiency in wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose a TDMA based multi-channel MAC protocol to improve the channel efficiency and network performance in wireless ad hoc networks. There are two main problems encountered in all related works in designing multi-channel MAC protocols. The first problem is the rendezvous problem and the second is multi-channel hidden node problem. In order to solve these problems, most of previous researches that have considered multi-channel MAC protocols use a common control channel to exchange control packets. However, they have a bottleneck problem at common control channel as increasing the number of data channels. The proposed MAC protocol solves the multi-channel hidden node problem using a TDMA scheme and increases the network throughput because transmitting and receiving data at the same time is possible. Also, since there is no common control channel, the network does not suffer from the common control channel saturation problem. Moreover, it achieves energy savings by allowing nodes that are not involved in communication to go into sleep mode. Simulation results show that the proposed multi-channel MAC protocol improves the network throughput and channel efficiency compared with the existing protocol such as HMCP and provides energy savings.