Improving Throughput and Delay of Ad-hoc Wireless Networks using Channel Hopping and Cognitive Aggregation (SSCH + SWIFT)

Today high bandwidth, capacity and responsiveness are very important in wireless networks. This has led to increased research in the areas of frequency diversity, wideband technologies and cognitive radios. SSCH [1] proposes to improve capacity by leveraging frequency diversity by having nodes communicate on different channels of the available spectrum. The idea of SWIFT [2] is to weave together non-contiguous frequency bands to create high throughput wireless links. We present a scheme that combines these techniques. Our simulation results shows that SSCH+SWIFT performs better in cases where the interference is distributed across the channels and time series, as we can now transmit on the part of the channel not occupied by the primary user. We also see a significant benefit over SWIFT in terms of queuing delays at the sender. This scheme also demonstrates the application of SWIFT to ad-hoc networks where centralized TDMA like scheduling, to accomodate multiple senders is difficult.