Polling-based media access protocols for use with smart adaptive array antennas

Use of an adaptive antenna array or a space-time processor at each base station of a wireless network can substantially abate the effects of multipath fading and co-channel interference. Among the expected benefits are higher data rates, greater frequency reuse factors, and overall higher capacity systems as needed to enable wireless multimedia services. Media access control (MAC) protocols which facilitate the deployment of such a processor have been previously proposed and studied. These MAC protocols invoke the delivery of a pilot tone from each packet access unit in the network as needed, so that the array antenna at the associated base station may rapidly adjust its weighting coefficients, or its per branch equalization coefficients, thereby ensuring subsequent reliable communication between the access unit and the base station. This paper considers two modifications to these earlier protocols, both based upon the notion of piggybacking information requests on to the actual information messages and both intended to improve utilization efficiency and mean delay performance. Results show that a maximum link utilization efficiency of 97% is readily achieved with either modification, and that this maximum utilization efficiency is independent of the number of remote users in the network. Note that the utilization efficiency refers to the throughput at maximum loading, i.e., when the remotes always have queued requests. The modifications also help in achieving a considerable reduction in the average delay in low-load regimes: for typical system parameters, the average delay at low load is only about 10% of that produced by the original schemes