A Priority MAC Protocol for Ad Hoc Networks with Multiple Channels

Priority scheduling has been widely used in mobile ad hoc networks. However, most of the prior work related to priority scheduling is designed only for a single data channel. In addition, without providing certain mechanisms to incorporate priority scheduling, existing multi-channel MAC protocols can not provide differentiated service. In this paper, we propose a multi-channel priority MAC protocol which can significantly increase the throughput of high priority flows and reduce their average delay. Our protocol consists of four mechanisms: control phase contention mechanism, priority- oriented channel assignment mechanism, data phase contention mechanism and flow interpolation mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol.