Abstract
In this paper we propose a Directional Antenna Medium Access (DAMA) protocol that takes advantage of the benefits offered by directional antennas and is best suited for sparsely distributed networks. A large portion of DAMA has been inspired by the IEEE 802.11 MAC, with major enhancements including a new neighbor discovery scheme, and an optimized circular directional transmission of RTS and CTS to prevent the hidden node problem, reduce collisions and decrease node deafness. In addition, a pair of communicating nodes using DAMA simultaneously transmits the circular directional RTS and CTS only to those sectors with neighbors, hence reducing overall communication delay and enhancing throughput. We have compared DAMA with IEEE 802.11 and two recently proposed directional MAC protocols, and results show that DAMA performs better than these protocols in the majority of the scenarios investigated while we point out that the performance depends on the network topology and traffic pattern.
Highlights
Most of the existing research on ad hoc networks typically assumes the use of omni directional antennas by all nodes
In this paper we have considered the problem of medium access control for ad hoc networks employing directional antennas
We have discussed the shortcomings of existing work and have proposed a new protocol, called Directional Antenna Medium Access (DAMA), which implements unique mechanisms including simultaneous transmissions of RTS and CTS packets, an optimized form of sweeping
Summary
Most of the existing research on ad hoc networks typically assumes the use of omni directional antennas by all nodes. Such an example is the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) [1] protocol which appears to efficiently solve the issues of this type of environment. DAMA addresses the hidden node problem and node deafness by employing a novel scheme of selective circular directional transmission of RTS and CTS, where these packets are transmitted only through the antennas with neighbors. We point out the deficiencies in existing MAC protocols proposed for directional antennas and show how DAMA overcomes such problems.
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