Described embodiments provide systems, methods and apparatus for operating a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). The MANET includes a plurality of nodes that are identified as stationary nodes or mobile nodes. One or more of the identified stationary nodes are set as backbone nodes. A backbone network is formed by the one or more backbone nodes and an alias is determined for each backbone node. Channel access is allocated to each backbone node based upon the determined alias for the one or more backbone nodes.