A performance comparison of single-radio multichannel medium access control protocols

Abstract

Single-radio multi-channel Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols aim to transmit in parallel on distinct channels while reducing the hardware cost. Although a variety of MAC protocols have been proposed in this context, no detailed classification and performance comparison is available. In this paper, we first classify previous efforts by their rendezvous characteristics as single- and multi-rendezvous protocols. Multirendezvous protocols have the capability of supporting simultaneous handshaking on different channels whereas with single-rendezvous protocols only asynchronous channel negotiations are allowed. Then, we further classify these protocols according to their spectrum decision mechanisms. We demonstrate the functionality of single- and multi-rendezvous protocols under different scenarios via extensive simulations. Our findings show that multi-rendezvous protocol performs better when the transmission range is low and less number of channels is available. Single-rendezvous protocols, on the other hand, are more suitable for networks with larger traffic loads due to their slot-based decision-making schemes.