Double Zones MIMO Routing Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, a MIMO routing protocol called as DZMRP (Double Zones MIMO Routing Protocol) for MIMO ad hoc networks was proposed. The DZMRP is a hybrid routing protocol that proactively maintains routes within a local zone of the network, which referred as the local routing zone and is divided into diversity zone and multiplex zone. Different updating frequencies of the changes of link connectivity are associated with the diversity zone and multiplex zone, so that the routing maintenance overhead is decreased dramatically. By leveraging the multiplex and diversity gains of MIMO links for the high data rate and the range extension respectively, the DZMRP improves the efficiency of a reactive route query/reply mechanism. Compared with other existing routing protocols such as ZRP and MIR, the DZMRP has much higher end-to-end throughput and lower packet delivery delay due to the dramatic reduction in protocol overhead.