A good channel assignment scheme in a multihop ad hoc network should not only guarantee successful data transmissions without collisions, but also enhance the channel spatial reuse to maximize the system throughput. It becomes very inefficient to use fixed channel assignment when the network size grows. Therefore, spatial reuse of channels become more important in a large multihop ad hoc network. In this paper, we consider an ad hoc network with an overlaid CDMA/TDMA structure. We divide each code into time slots to form the channels. A dynamic channel assignment (DCA) strategies called Greedy-Based DCA (GB-DCA) is proposed in a clustered wireless multihop ad hoc network. This DCA strategy is designed to make better use of available channels by taking advantage of the spatial reuse concept. In GB-DCA, the increase in spatial reuse is achieved by adding certain control overhead. We show that the bandwidth saving due to channel spatial reuse is higher than the additional bandwidth spent on the control overhead.

There has been a growing interest in multihop wireless ad hoc networks in recent years. Previous studies have shown that, in a wireless multihop network using the slotted ALOHA as the medium access control mechanism, the maximum throughput can be achieved if the number of neighbors is six to eight. We show that, when using the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol in a wireless ad hoc network, the maximum end-to-end goodput is achieved when all nodes are within transmission range of each other. The main reason is that the channel spatial reuse factor gained from the multihop network does not match the increase in additional transmission hops that a packet needs to travel in a multihop network. For a multihop network, its MAC frame delivery capacity is approximately fixed at a value dependent on its spatial reuse factor. If the offered load increases, less capacity will be spent on delivering packets that eventually reach their destinations and hence resulting in lower end-to-end goodput.