A multi-channel MAC protocol with dynamic channel allocation in CDMA ad hoc networks

It is a challenging task to design an efficient MAC protocol in Ad Hoc networks due to the lack of central control equipments. In this paper, a new multi-channel MAC protocols with dynamic channel allocation in CDMA Ad Hoc networks, MMAC-DCA, is presented. In MMAC-DCA, the wireless channel is divided into one common sub-channel and L service sub-channels by CDMA mechanism. All the nodes exchange RTS and CTS on the common sub-channel to reserve the service sub-channels for transmission. Different from the MACA/C-T and C-T, the service sub-channels are allocated dynamically in the distributed mode only when a node has a package to transmit. The protocol can reduce the number of spreading codes required and increase the throughput normalized by available bandwidth. In addition, a Markov mode is presented to analyze the performance of this protocol in theory including the normalized throughput and the transfer delay of data packages.