Implications of directional antennas for mobile radio networks

Abstract

In terrestrial military networks quality of service (QoS) is a stochastic variable subject to the tyranny of the local environment. Thousands of man-years of effort have been expended in attempts to design more robust and reliable networks and to efficiently manage scarce spectrum resources. Software defined radio (SDR) and directional antennas are two key enabling technologies for improving radio communications. But simply attaching directional antennas to a conventional radio network will not significantly improve performance. Indeed, without the network providing critical pointing information, directional antennas would likely make performance worse while significantly increasing cost.