On the performance of ad hoc networks with beamforming antennas

  • Authors:
  • Ram Ramanathan

  • Affiliations:
  • Internetwork Research Department, BBN Technologies (A part of Verizon), Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • Venue:
  • MobiHoc '01 Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Beamforming antennas have the potential to provide a fundamental breakthrough in ad hoc network capacity. We present a broad-based examination of this potential, focusing on exploiting the longer ranges as well as the reduced interference that beamforming antennas can provide. We consider a number of enhancements to a convectional ad hoc network system, and evaluation the impact of each enhancement using simulation. Such enhancements include "aggressive" and "conservative" channel access models for beamforming antennas, link power control, and directional neighbor discovery. Our simulations are based on detailed modeling on detailed modeling of steered as well as swiched beams using antenna patterns of varying gains, and a realistic radio and propagation model. For the scenarios studied, our results show that beamforming can yield a 28% to 118% (depending upon the density) improvement in throughput, and up to a factor-of-28 reduction in delay. Our study also tells us which mechanisms are likely to be more effective and under what conditions, which in turn identifies areas where future research is neede