Power control and spatial reusability by using directional antenna in wireless ad hoc networks

Abstract

Directional Antennas are used to have a more flexible MAC protocol in wireless ad hoc networks by transmitting in the preferred directions and minimizing average transmission power. In this paper, a directional MAC protocol is introduced to not only improve energy efficiency, but also to increase throughput. To that end, we modified IEEE 802.11 to propose a more efficient MAC protocol that accomplishes spatial reuse by employing a directional antenna based power control procedure. The simulation results validate that the throughput and power efficiency of the proposed MAC protocol has improved compared to well-known IEEE 802.11 MAC.