multi-channel medium access control protocol for multicast in mobile ad-hoc network

Abstract — In mobile ad-hoc network, some multi-channel MAC protocols utilize multiple channels to reduce the collision of wireless transmission and thus get high throughput. These multi-channel MAC protocols aim at improving the performance of unicast communication, and multicast data are generally transmitted through broadcast. So multicast can’t benefit from the multi-channel technique. This paper proposes a multi-channel media access control protocol for multicast(MCMAC) which uses multi-channel techniques to improve multicast performance. MCMAC and multicast routing protocols can cooperate well through some simple interfaces and each protocols keeps its independence. To improve the reliability of MAC layer, we also developed a reliable multi-channel MAC protocol for multicast(RMCMAC). Taking ODMRP[2] as an example of multicast routing protocols, we evaluate the multicast performance of MCMAC and RMCMAC for ad hoc networks via detailed simulation