Channel quality correlation based channel probing in multiple channels

Many wireless networks provide a large number of available channels for data transmissions. Due to the multi-path environment, channels have different channel qualities. There- fore, selecting a good channel from the multiple channels can improve the communication effectiveness. The Packet Reception Rate (PRR) has been utilized to represent the channel quality. In order to know which channel has good quality, communication systems probe each channel and measure PRR. However, probing is time and energy consuming. In this paper, we propose a wireless channel probing approach, optimal channel probing (OCP), to efficiently select high-quality wireless channels. The OCP method utilizes a MAX-separation method to reduce the number of probing channels. In an evaluation using simulations and usrp2 real devices, we found that OCP is both effective and efficient at selecting high- quality channels and more efficient than existing channel probing methods.