On The Capacity Of Multi-Channel Ad Hoc Networks

New challenges in ad hoc networks design refer to higher network capacity with an increasing bandwidth demand in recent years. A widely used proposal is the use of multi-channel nodes, detailed in switching channels in order to achieve multiple transmissions on different channels simultaneously, for the purpose of performing a high capacity with the constraint on network connectivity. Our work is focused on characterizing the capacity region in multi-channel ad hoc networks, including analysing the key factors that influence the network capacity. A series of researches on the capacity of multi-channel ad hoc networks have been made, through simulation studies, theory performances and testbed estimations, sequentially. Discussions of the results have also been given. First, the original radio model in OPNET is modified. A better performance of the improved radio models in the low-layer simulations of multi-channel wireless networks than the original one has been shown. Second, a fully polynomial time approximation algorithm is used here to calculate the capacity upper bound of multi-channel ad hoc networks. At last, a software testbed for multi-channel ad hoc networks is put up. A wireless gateway node is used to link into Internet.