<b>Addressing the Multichannel Selection, Scheduling and Coordination Cost</b>

<p dir="ltr">We discuss a new multichannel coordination and scheduling challenge called the Multichannel Scheduling Cost (MSC). It is caused by the inability of the control channel to schedule simultaneous transmissions resulting in data channels lying idle and their bandwidth underutilized. As a result, wasted bandwidth increases as the number of data channels increases. To address this challenge, a cyclic scheduling Algorithm (CSA) is proposed. It employs one dedicated signaling channel and 4 data channels. It is premised on a proactive channel reservation scheme which reduces the idleness of channels. The scheme ensures that data channels are reserved while they are still busy. The data channels are reserved while their remaining transmission duration is equal to the virtual carrier sensing duration. This gives the next pair sufficient time to reserve the current data channel before it becomes available, limiting the MSC to the first cycle. The simulation results show a performance benefit of the CSA scheme in addressing the effects of the MSC.</p>