MBDMAC: A MAC Protocol for Multi-beam Directional Antennas in Wireless Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new MAC protocol for multi-beam directional antenna. In the protocol, each beam-sector has its own control channel, thus the communications among different beam-sectors are independent. It uses the Directional Network Allocation Vector (DNAV) to record the establishment processes. After sensing all the sectors of multi-beam antenna, it uses the global assignment strategy to assign the directional communication channels. Extensive simulation results show that our protocol can significantly improve the throughput of entire wireless network at the expense of the slightly increased RTS/DRTS requests during establishment process.