  The described multicoloring problem has direct applications in the context of
wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. In order to coordinate the access to the
shared wireless medium, the nodes of such a network need to employ some medium
access control (MAC) protocol. Typical MAC protocols control the access to the
shared channel by time (TDMA), frequency (FDMA), or code division multiple
access (CDMA) schemes. Many channel access schemes assign a fixed set of time
slots, frequencies, or (orthogonal) codes to the nodes of a network such that
nodes that interfere with each other receive disjoint sets of time slots,
frequencies, or code sets. Finding a valid assignment of time slots,
frequencies, or codes hence directly corresponds to computing a multicoloring
of a graph $G$. The scarcity of bandwidth, energy, and computing resources in
ad hoc and sensor networks, as well as the often highly dynamic nature of these
networks require that the multicoloring can be computed based on as little and
as local information as possible.
