Chain RTS/CTS scheme with Opportunistic Channel Allocation

Current Wi-Fi standards lack in terms of providing reliable multi-hop links for bandwidth-hungry applications. As a result, aerial networks which need reliable & high bandwidth multi-hop communication links, fail to maintain QoS levels. In this paper, we take a deeper look at our earlier work, Chain RTS/CTS, which makes channel reservations by repeating the RTS frame of the source of the e2e link towards the destination node using alternating channels. After receiving the RTS frame, destination node starts backward CTS chain where CTS frames are repeated similarly using the same route with forward RTS chain towards the source node of e2e link. Additionally, we introduce Opportunistic Channel Allocation designed to increase fairness when operating at 5 GHz band. Our simulations show 37% throughput improvement in multi-hop links with 68% increased link setup time when compared to simple channel hopping enhancement scheme for single e2e connection. When there are multiple concurrent e2e connections, our solution improves the throughput by 27% compared to Classical Channel Hopping (which alternates channels at each hop) with only 11% lower Jain's Fairness index.