I. Introduction
IEEE 802.11 networking is entering a new phase with the ongoing standardization of IEEE 802.11s [1] and the recent introduction of Wi-Fi Direct [2] technology. So far, the 802.11 end user devices have been operating in the infrastructure mode where device-to-device communication is not allowed and they have to talk via an access point. The new technologies will, however, allow 802.11 devices to easily communicate directly with each other by forming a mesh network, which will open up new avenues for deviceto-device communication. The full potential of these avenues lies in allowing multiple simultaneous transmissions in a given radio neighborhood, which is a challenge for current 802.11 mesh networks based on a fixed single channel communication architecture. To address this, multi-channel communication techniques are being investigated in order to allow multichannel access in 802.11 mesh. The focus of this study is on practical utilization of a novel cooperation approach at the media access control (MAC) layer to allow multi-channel access in 802.11 mesh networks.