Throughput Analysis of Frequency-Agile Medium Access Control Protocols

In this paper, we analyze three opportunistic multichannel MAC protocols that associate a newcoming terminal station to one of the access points available within its transmission range: 1) by selecting the access point with best signal-to-noise-ratio transmission link, the protocol "max SNR" achieves selection diversity gain, 2) by selecting the access point with lowest load, the protocol "min load" achieves "load balancing" gain, 3) by selecting the access point which provides the best throughput among all access points, the protocol "max throughput" achieves the optimum trade-off between selection diversity gain and occupancy. All three protocols achieve significant gain against the random association scheme in an opportunistic and distributed manner. Our calculations based on the bins and balls analysis shows that protocols "max SNR" and "min load" are near-optimal at low SNR and high SNR, respectively.