Direction finding in IEEE802.11 wireless networks

Author

Kalis, Antonis ; Antonakopoulos, Theodore

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Technol., Univ. of Patras, Rio-Patras, Greece

Volume

51

Issue

5

fYear

2002

fDate

10/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

940

Lastpage

948

Abstract

A novel direction-finding method for stations of IEEE802.11 wireless local area networks is presented in this paper. The method uses a switched beam array for determining the direction of arrival of the incident electromagnetic field in a time efficient way and associates certain medium access control (MAC) layer functions with different radiation patterns of the switched antenna array, in order to determine the proper orientation of directional beams on both entities of a communication link. The application of the proposed method to an IEEE802.11 wireless network is presented and it is depicted how the method improves the network performance without requiring any modifications to the existing MAC protocol.

Keywords

IEEE standards; access protocols; antenna arrays; antenna radiation patterns; direction-of-arrival estimation; directive antennas; indoor radio; radio direction-finding; wireless LAN; IEEE802.11 wireless local area networks; IEEE802.11 wireless networks; MAC protocol; communication link entities; direction finding; direction of arrival estimation; directional beam orientation; directive antennas; incident electromagnetic field; indoor radio communications; medium access control layer functions; switched antenna array radiation patterns; switched beam array; wireless LAN; Antenna arrays; Antenna radiation patterns; Beams; Communication switching; Directive antennas; Electromagnetic fields; Media Access Protocol; Navigation; Wireless LAN; Wireless networks;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Instrumentation and Measurement, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9456

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TIM.2002.807806

Filename

1174021