Using pulse/tone on a channel reservation mechanism for directional communications

The IEEE802.11 standard has been commonly employed in ad hoc networks. The use of directional antennas in such networks has increased significantly since these antennas provide throughput gain and increase space division. However, IEEE802.11 based directional MAC protocols have a number of challenges to overcome. Latency due to channel reservation using frames RTS/CTS is one of them. In this context, this paper proposes a channel reservation technique based on pulse/tone signals. This technique reduces the latency and has a very low probability of failure. The proposed technique has been validated through a theoretical analysis followed by simulations. The results show that the proposed technique is able to provide a throughput up to 42.9% higher than when RTS/CTS scheme is used.