The wireless mobile ad hoc network (MANET) architecture has received a lot of attention recently. This paper considers the access of multiple channels in a MANET with multi-hop communication behavior. We point out several interesting issues when using multiple channels. We then propose a new multi-channel MAC protocol, which is characterized by the following features: (i) it follows an "on-demand" style to assign channels to mobile hosts, (ii) the number of channels required is independent of the network topology and degree, (iii) it flexibly adapts to host mobility and only exchanges few control messages to achieve channel assignment and medium access, and (iv) no clock synchronization is required. Compared to existing protocols, some assign channels to hosts statically (thus a host will occupy a channel even when it has no intention to transmit) [4, 12, 14] some require a number of channels which is a function of the maximum connectivity [4, 10, 12, 14], and some necessitate a clock synchronization among all hosts in the MANET [14, 24]. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed protocol.
