DYNAMMA: A DYNAmic Multi-channel Medium Access Framework for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

This paper introduces a scheduled-access, multi-channel medium access control (MAC) framework for wireless multi-hop ad hoc networks (MANETs). The proposed framework dubbed dynamic multi-channel medium access, or DYNAMMA, features: (1) ability to dynamically adapt to application-specific traffic patterns, (2) collision-free, multi-channel operation, (3) energy efficiency, and (4) minimum signaling overhead. We evaluate DYNAMMA through extensive simulations and compare its performance against scheduled-access (e.g., TRAMA) and contention-based (e.g., 802.11) MAC protocols for different application scenarios. Our results show that DYNAMMA´s ability to perform collision-free transmission over multiple channels significantly increases system capacity through higher channel utilization and spatial re-use. When compared to TRAMA, DYNAMMA´s efficiency in terms of signaling overhead yields considerable energy savings as well as queueing delay reduction. We also present an implementation of DYNAMMA over an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio testbed. Our UWB testbed results indicate that DYNAMMA can achieve both high channel utilization (close to 90% for our experiments) and high energy efficiency (nodes, on average, sleep one third of the time).