Impact of Dynamic Channel Assignment on Blocking Probability in Ad Hoc Wireless Sensor Networks
Ammar Muqaddas, Fadi Al-Turjman and Sami Habib
International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS 2007)
San Diego, California (USA), July 16-18, 2007
SPECTS_Summary
Instead of all the sensor nodes broadcasting on a single channel, the given frequency band can be partitioned into multiple channels via FDMA. Also each network interface card at each sensor is assigned locally unique channel at any given time. The usage of multiple channels for sending and receiving packets in wireless sensor networks is still mostly in the research phase. We have explored the benefits of multiple channels and channel assignment algorithms that are usually known to be used in optical fiber networks, such as a first fit, random, most used, and least used. These algorithms can be used in conjunction with the routing algorithms. In this paper, we introduce a new collision avoidance algorithm for simulation purposes based on neighborhood knowledge, and then we use the proposed algorithm in a simulated environment to analyze the effects of four different dynamic channel assignment algorithms on the packet blocking probability in different test cases. Our results show that the least used channel assignment performs the best with a blocking probability of 0.16. Also our experimental results illustrate the network interface card energy consumption.