Exploitation of multi-channel communications in industrial wireless sensor applications: Avoiding interference and enabling coexistence

Most of the current wireless sensor networks operate on crowded unlicensed frequency bands. Especially in industrial wireless sensor applications this causes problems because of the received interference from other systems and coexistence problems with other wireless sensor networks. Multi-channel communications can be utilized to improve the performance under interference and enable coexistence of different applications. In this paper we propose a novel multi-channel Media Access Control (MAC) approach designed especially for industrial wireless sensor networks, named Generic Multi-channel MAC protocol (G-McMAC). G-McMAC performs well in terms of delay and throughput while it is also robust to interference and enables coexistence. In addition, G-McMAC is flexible, scalable and easily implementable to various applications since it does not use predetermined frame structures. Our theoretical results imply that G-McMAC outperforms other existing solutions. In addition, simulation results from a real-world industrial scenario show that G-McMAC is applicable for industrial wireless sensor applications.