Research On MAC Protocols For Wireless Mesh Networks Using Directional Antennas

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a new type of broadband distributed wireless network with high rate and high capacity. Using directional antennas can increase further spatial reuse and reduce the radio interference, and thereby improve network capacity greatly.The MAC protocols of WMNs using directional antennas are studied in this paper. Firstly, the architecture and features of WMNs and directional antenna models are introduced. Secondly, the impacts of using directional antennas on the MAC protocols of WMNs are analyzed. Then, aimed at solving the problems of neighbor discovery, deafness and new hidden terminals, two new protocols called DHTDMA and NDDMAC are proposed. Finally, NDDMAC protocol is implemented under NS-2, and performance comparison with existing protocols is made. The results show that NDDMAC protocol can achieve higher throughput and shorter end-to-end delay.