Journal of Applied Sciences ›› 2006, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (5): 447-452.

• Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

New Dual-Channel MAC Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks and Its Performance

GU Yan, SHEN Lian-feng, QIU Xiao-hua   

  1. National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
  • Received:2005-04-21 Revised:2005-09-20 Online:2006-09-30 Published:2006-09-30

Abstract: This paper presents a new medium access control (MAC) protocol called DCMAC (dual-channel MAC) for multi-hop ad hoc networks.Dual-channel and improved handshakes as well as channel reservation are employed to avoid collision in data transmission.The hidden terminal and the exposed terminal problems during data transmission are resolved and the channel utilization is increased.Based on receiving control packets, nodes use 3 different network allocation vectors (NAV) in control channel or data channel.In the period of data transmission, the hidden terminal can receive data simultaneously and the exposed terminal can also transmit data.The throughput performance of the protocol is analyzed and evaluated in heavy traffic networks.A comparison with a RTS/CTS based protocol is given.The results show that the DCMAC protocol can improve the throughput in a multi-hop ad hoc network.

Key words: MAC protocol, dual-channel, ad hoc networks, throughput

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