Limiting the effects of deafness and hidden terminal problems in directional communications

Abstract

It is known that wireless ad hoc networks employing omnidirectional communications suffer from poor network throughput due to inefficient spatial reuse. Although the use of directional communications is expected to provide significant improvements, the lack of efficient mechanisms to deal with deafness and hidden terminal problems makes it difficult to fully explore its benefits. The main contribution of this work is to propose a Medium Access Control (MAC) scheme which aims to lessen the effects of deafness and hidden terminal problems in directional communications without precluding spatial reuse. Unlike other proposals that focus on exploring the characteristics of the physical layer, the proposed MAC protocol relies on simple mechanisms that can be easily coupled with a directional antenna without requiring major modifications to the current MAC standard.