Adaptive antenna adjustment for 3D urban wireless mesh networks

Abstract

We design and evaluate a new type of wireless mesh nodes called Dyntenna nodes that are equipped with steerable omnidirectional antenna. Designed for 3D wireless mesh networks, these nodes adaptively adjust the antenna orientation to increase throughput by improving the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) reading between nodes. We demonstrate the importance of being able to programmatically orient the antenna, by presenting the measurement results from our 3D urban mesh testbed. We propose a simple antenna adjustment algorithm that can improve the throughput for 26% of one-hop paths and 35% of multi-hop paths by a median value of 31% and 46%, respectively. Our algorithm converges quickly and typically probes less than 10% of all possible antenna orientations on average.