OLSR-MC: A proactive routing protocol for multi-channel wireless ad-hoc networks

Despite the fact that it is not optimal, the availability of low-cost, commodity network interface cards (NICs) has made the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol the de facto MAC standard for wireless mobile ad-hoc networks. The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is designed to have stations share a single channel in a given network. However, many of the IEEE 802.11 physical (PHY) layer specifications define multiple channels and allow the simultaneous, non-interfering use of some of these channels. Therefore, simultaneous communications can use different channels, offering the opportunity to increase the effective network capacity. We have designed and implemented an innovative proactive routing protocol that utilizes multiple channels to improve performance in a mobile ad hoc network. The key feature of the protocol is that nodes can effectively use multiple channels for simultaneous useful transmissions, thus improving network capacity. The proposed scheme requires minor changes to existing proactive or table-driven routing protocols and no modifications to the current IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. To demonstrate the multi-channel routing scheme, we extend the optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol to create a multi-channel version, OLSR-MC. Experimental results indicate that OLSR-MC successfully exploits multiple channels to improve network capacity and increases the network throughput