Is Diversity Gain Worth the Pain: Performance Comparison Between Opportunistic Multi-Channel MAC and Single-Channel MAC

In this paper we analyze the delay performance of an opportunistic multi-channel medium access control scheme and compare it to that of the corresponding single channel MAC scheme. In the opportunistic multi-channel MAC scheme, we assume that the pair of sender/receiver is able to evaluate the channel quality after a certain amount of channel sensing delay and to choose the best one for data communication. We consider three settings: (1) an ideal scenario where no control channel is needed and no sensing delay is incurred, (2) a more realistic scheme where users compete for access on a control channel using random access, and (3) a scheme similar to (2) but with a Time Division Multiplex (TDM) based access scheme on the control channel. Our analysis show that in terms of delay performance, the random access overhead on the control channel almost always wipe out the channel diversity gain, which is the main motivation behind an opportunistic multi-channel MAC. Using a TDM based access scheme on the control channel can help remove this bottleneck, but only when channel sensing can be done sufficiently fast.