Poster Abstract: Scaling Capacity of a Dual Channel MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11 Ad-hoc Networks

When an IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc network achieves capacity C by using a single channel, the targeted capacity by using two channels should be C  2 . However, most of the multichannel 802.11 protocols proposed in the literature only appear to be able to achieve less than 60% of the C  2 targeted capacity. In our paper [1], we proposed a link-directionality-based dual channel MAC protocol (DCP) to boost the network capacities up to 78% of our targeted capacities, 78%* C  2 = C  56 . 1 . However, DCP still failed to reach the C  2 capacity target due to the overheads incurred by the protocol. In this paper, we implement a power exchange algorithm on top of the DCP in an attempt to double the capacities of networks using the single-channel 802.11 protocol. This algorithm incurs relatively small overheads and significantly releases the protocol constraints imposed by DCP. Simulations show that the proposed scheme (DCPwPEA) can achieve more than 132% of our targeted capacities, 132%* C  2 = C  64 . 2 . We believe this protocol can be further extended to allow multi-link simultaneous transmissions which can scale the network capacities of ad-hoc networks by using only two channels.