Energy-Efficient Strategies for Cooperative Multichannel MAC Protocols

Distributed Information SHaring (DISH) is a new cooperative approach to designing multichannel MAC protocols. It aids nodes in their decision making processes by compensating for their missing information via information sharing through neighboring nodes. This approach was recently shown to significantly boost the throughput of multichannel MAC protocols. However, a critical issue for ad hoc communication devices, viz. energy efficiency, has yet to be addressed. In this paper, the authors address this issue by developing simple solutions that reduce the energy consumption without compromising the throughput performance and meanwhile maximize cost efficiency.