Design of an Adaptive Multi-Channel Algorithm in WLANs

The IEEE 802.11 specification for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) supports multichannel transmissions up to the 160 MHz band. However, inefficiencies arise when the entire bandwidth is allocated for a single user and when the size of the transmitted data is very small. In this paper, we propose a novel medium access control method, which is called the Adaptive Multi-Channel Access (AMCA) protocol, for an ad hoc wireless network. The AMCA enables simultaneous transmissions to multiple stations on different channels. We implement and evaluate the AMCA using the MATLAB platform. In addition, we compare the AMCA with the IEEE 802.11 multichannel and the IEEE 802.11 single channel. The simulation results show that the adaptive common channel method for the coordination of the channel use allocation between the STAs offers a similar performance to the IEEE 802.11.