Multiband Directional Neighbor Discovery in Self-Organized mmWave Ad Hoc Networks

A 60-GHz radio is an attractive technology in wireless home networks because it can provide high data rate up to a few gigabits per second. A 60-GHz network generally uses directional antennas and has a problem of neighbor discovery (ND), although it has an advantage of high data transmissions. In particular, if a directional antenna is used in self-organized wireless ad hoc networks, the ND time and energy consumption can be significantly increased. To solve this problem, we propose a multiband directional ND (MDND) scheme, in which management procedures are carried out by using the 2.4-GHz band with the omnidirectional antennas, whereas data transmissions are performed by using the 60-GHz band with directional antennas. Analytical models on the ND time and energy consumption are also derived by considering assisted and beamforming periods in the ND procedure through the omnidirectional and directional antennas. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms comparative schemes that use only directional beamforming in terms of the average ND time and energy consumption.