An Enhanced Medium Access Control Protocol for Multi-Channel Multi-Interface Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

Multiple non-overlapping channels specified by the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN standard can be used simultaneously to increase the aggregate bandwidth. However, multi-channel multi-interface protocols may incur a type of hidden terminal problems. The existing multi-channel multi-interface IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols have room to be improved. In this paper, we propose an enhanced MAC protocol with a hybrid channel assignment strategy and a dynamic waiting time scheme for multi-channel multi-interface WMN to avoid the multi-channel hidden terminal problem. The proposed dynamic waiting time scheme assigns an appropriate waiting time for each channel by using the information of traffic loads to utilize the available bandwidth and reduce the end-to-end delay. From simulation results, we show that the proposed MAC protocol can increase system throughput and decrease the end-to-end delay.