Demo: Enhancing indoor spatial reuse through adaptive antenna beamsteering

Abstract

Widespread deployment of indoor wireless LANs has brought about many advantages, but at the same time posed tremendous challenges for interference management and service scalability. One means to improve wireless capacity in dense deployments is through simultaneous directional transmissions and receptions, but there has yet to be a coordinated approach that can adapt well to fast-changing channel conditions. In this demonstration we present a distributed directional antenna system to enhance spatial reuse in indoor scenarios. Our system is a holistic approach combining smart antennas, synchronous channel access, and an adaptive antenna beamsteering mechanism. We implement this system on software-defined radios and demonstrate the feasibility of dense spatial packing to maximize the network sum rate.