SAND: Sectored-Antenna Neighbor Discovery Protocol for Wireless Networks

Directional antennas provide great performance improvement for wireless networks, such as increased network capacity and reduced energy consumption. Nonetheless new media access and routing protocols are required to control the directional antenna system. One of the most important protocols is neighbor discovery, which is aiming at setting up links between nodes and their neighbors. In the past few years, a number of algorithms have been proposed for neighbor discovery with directional antennas. However, most of them cannot work efficiently when taking into account the collision case that more than one node exist in one directional beam. For practical considerations, we propose a new neighbor discovery algorithm to overcome this shortcoming. Moreover, we present a novel and practical mathematical model to analyze the performance of neighbor discovery algorithms considering collision effects. Numerical results clearly show our new algorithm always requires less time to discover the whole neighbors than previous ones. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first complete, practical analytical model that incorporates directional neighbor discovery algorithms.

show abstract

“…From equation (19) we can get the lemma proved. Therefore, the expectation of time slots required to discover all the neighbors is given by:…”

Section: Appendix Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The problem, however, becomes more challenging when directional antennas are used due to the following reasons: i) The limited radial range of the beamwidth of the directional antenna that covers only a fraction of the azimuth. ii) Neighboring nodes must know when and where to point their directional beams to discover each other [19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neighbor discovery algorithms in wireless networks using directional antennas

Cai

Liu

Gui

et al. 2012

2012 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Knowing the locations of its neighboring nodes and their antenna beam directions has a great impact on the DMAC protocol design. Traditional directional neighbor discovery algorithms can be asynchronous [106,107] or synchronous [58][59][60]108,109]. Recent directional neighbor discovery algorithms focus on discovering all potential neighboring nodes within a predetermined time and fast directional neighbor discovery [110,111].…”

Section: Neighbor Discoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

Directional Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocols in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wong

Chen

Chin

2015

JSAN

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This survey paper presents the state-of-the-art directional medium access control (MAC) protocols in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks (WAHSNs). The key benefits of directional antennas over omni-directional antennas are longer communication range, less multipath interference, more spatial reuse, more secure communications, higher throughput and reduced latency. However, directional antennas lead to single-/multi-channel directional hidden/exposed terminals, deafness and neighborhood, head-of-line blocking, and MAC-layer capture which need to be overcome. Addressing these problems and benefits for directional antennas to MAC protocols leads to many classes of directional MAC protocols in WAHSNs. These classes of directional MAC protocols presented in this survey paper include single-channel, multi-channel, cooperative and cognitive directional MACs. Single-channel directional MAC protocols can be classified as contention-based or non-contention-based or hybrid-based, while multi-channel directional MAC protocols commonly use a common control channel for control packets/tones and one or more data channels for directional data transmissions. Cooperative directional MAC protocols improve throughput in WAHSNs via directional multi-rate/single-relay/multiple-relay/two frequency channels/polarization, while cognitive directional MAC protocols leverage on conventional directional MAC protocols with new twists to address dynamic spectrum access. All of these directional MAC protocols are the pillars for the design of future directional MAC protocols in WAHSNs.

show abstract

“…Recently, researchers have designed several ESD and other types of directional antennas for WSNs [3][4][5][6]. Most measurements with these antennas, however, have only assessed the directionality of the antenna, showing that the received signal strength of nodes that are in the direction in which the antenna radiates its maximum power is indeed higher than that of nodes at other locations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Link Dynamics in Wireless Sensor Networks with Dynamically Steerable Directional Antennas

Voigt

Mottola

Hewage

2013

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. By radiating the power in the direction of choice, electronicallyswitched directional (ESD) antennas can reduce network contention and avoid packet loss. There exists some ESD antennas for wireless sensor networks, but so far researchers have mainly evaluated their directionality. There are no studies regarding the link dynamics of ESD antennas, in particular not for indoor deployments and other scenarios where nodes are not necessarily in line of sight. Our long-term experiments confirm that previous findings that have demonstrated the dependence of angleof-arrival on channel frequency also hold for directional transmissions with ESD antennas. This is important for the design of protocols for wireless sensor networks with ESD antennas: the best antenna direction, i.e., the direction that leads to the highest packet reception rate and signal strength at the receiver, is not stable but varies over time and with the selected IEEE 802.15.4 channel. As this requires protocols to incorporate some form of adaptation, we present an intentionally simple and yet efficient mechanism for selecting the best antenna direction at run-time with an energy overhead below 2% compared to standard omni-directional transmissions.

show abstract

SAND: Sectored-Antenna Neighbor Discovery Protocol for Wireless Networks

Cited by 51 publications

References 17 publications

Neighbor discovery algorithms in wireless networks using directional antennas

Neighbor discovery algorithms in wireless networks using directional antennas

Directional Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocols in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks: A Survey

Understanding Link Dynamics in Wireless Sensor Networks with Dynamically Steerable Directional Antennas

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About