Power-controlled medium access for ad hoc networks with directional antennas

Directional antennas have the potential to significantly improve the throughput of a wireless ad hoc network. At the same time, energy consumption can be considerably reduced if the network implements per-packet transmission power control. Typical MAC protocols for ad hoc networks (e.g., the IEEE 802.11 Ad Hoc mode) were designed for wireless devices with omnidirectional antennas. When used with directional antennas, such protocols suffer from several medium access problems, including interference from minor lobes and hidden-terminal problems, which prevent full exploitation of the potential of directional antennas. In this paper, we propose a power-controlled MAC protocol for directional antennas that ameliorates these problems. Our protocol allows for dynamic adjustment of the transmission power for both data and clear-to-send (CTS) packets to optimize energy consumption. It provides a mechanism for permitting interference-limited concurrent transmissions and choosing the appropriate tradeoff between throughput and energy consumption. The protocol enables nodes to implement load control in a distributed manner, whereby the total interference in the neighborhood of a receiver is upper-bounded. Simulation results demonstrate that the combined gain from concurrent transmissions using directional antennas and power control results in significant improvement in network throughput and considerable reduction in energy consumption.