Algorithmic aspects of communication in ad-hoc networks with smart antennas

Smart antennas have gained significant importance in multi-hop wireless networks in recent years, because of their sophisticated signal processing capabilities that hold the potential for increased data rates and reliability. In this work, we consider the problem of communication in multi-hop wireless networks with smart antennas (specifically digital adaptive arrays). These smart antennas provide degrees of freedom (DOFs) that can be used to suppress co-existing communication links, thereby increasing spatial reuse in the network. Thus, the communication problem comprises of not just determining a channel access mechanism to be used by the communication links, but also involves the determination of the communication pattern (usage of DOFs) to be used by each node during channel access. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first step towards addressing this problem.We first consider the problem of determining the communication pattern to be used by the nodes and formulate it combinatorially with the goal of optimizing network performance through interference minimization. We present efficient centralized and distributed algorithms that are within a factor of ¾ and ½ of the optimum solution respectively. We then extend the distributed algorithm to incorporate TDMA-based scheduling in a purely localized manner. The distributed algorithms are then evaluated through simulations in ns2 and insights are drawn into the potential performance benefits of smart antennas in multi-hop wireless networks.

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