Multi-Channel MAC Protocols with Two Transceivers Pursuing Effective Use of Vacant Resources

Multi-Channel MAC protocols increase network throughput because multiple data transfers can take place simultaneously. However, existing Multi-Channel MAC protocols do not take full advantage of the multi-channel environment, because they lack a mechanism allowing wireless stations to acquire vacant channel and time resources. In this paper, to achieve further throughput increase, we newly propose the Multi-Channel MAC protocols that effectively utilize idle channels and potentially available time of stations by employing burst and interrupted frame transfers, under the condition that each station can use only two transceivers. We assume a transceiver can behave as either a transmitter or a receiver at a time. We show the effectiveness of the proposed methods by computer simulation. Furthermore, through the evaluation as to more than two transceivers´ case, we confirm two transceivers´ case is best solution in terms of both attained throughput and hardware complexity.