Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A Robust Deafness-Free MAC Protocol for Directional Antennas in Ad Hoc Networks

  • Published:
Wireless Personal Communications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Directional antennas provide many benefits such as high gain and increased transmission range in wireless networks. However, the deafness problem in directional antennas can greatly decrease transmission efficiency. For example, a source node fails to communicate with the intended destination node if the destination node is beamforming in another direction. In this paper, a deafness-free medium access control (DF-MAC) protocol for directional antennas in ad hoc networks is proposed, which is based on a code division multiple access technique. In DF-MAC, two control codes are additionally used not only for handshaking but also for overcoming the deafness problem. The proposed DF-MAC successfully solves all the four types of the deafness problem in ad hoc networks with directional antennas. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first MAC protocol that completely solves all the four types of the deafness problem. Furthermore, unlike other deafness-aware MAC protocols, the proposed DF-MAC supports mobility. Simulation results show that the proposed DF-MAC outperforms the existing deafness-aware MAC protocols in terms of network throughput and control overhead in both static and mobile environments. If the deafness problem occurs frequently, the effectiveness of DF-MAC is dramatically increased.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Jain, V., Gupta, A., & Agrawal, D. P. (2008). On-demand medium access in multihop wireless networks with multiple beam smart antennas. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 19, 489–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Choudhury, R. R., Yang, X., Ramanathan, R., & Vaidya, N. H. (2006). On designing MAC protocols for wireless networks using directional antennas. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 5, 471–491.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Chen, K., & Jiang, F. (2007). Addressing deafness problems in wireless ad hoc networks with directional antennas. In Proceeding of 4th IEEE consumer communications and networking conference (pp. 171–176).

  4. Gossain, H., Cordeiro, C., Cavalcanti, D., & Agrawal, D. P. (2004). The deafness problems and solutions in wireless ad hoc networks using directional antennas. In Proceeding of IEEE Global telecommunications conference (GLBECOM) (pp. 108—113).

  5. Takata, M., Bandai, M., & Watanabe, T. (2007). A MAC protocol with directional antennas for deafness avoidance in ad hoc networks. In Proceeding of IEEE global telecommunications conference (GLBECOM) (pp. 620–625).

  6. Choudhury, R. R., Yang, X., Ramanathan, R., & Vaidya, N. H. (2002). Using directional antennas for medium access control in ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of ACM MobiCom (pp. 59–69).

  7. Boukerche, A. F., Oliveira, H. A. B. F., Nakamura, E. F., & Loureiro, A. A. F. (2007). Localization systems for wireless sensor networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 14, 6–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Albowicz, J., Chen, A., & Zhang, L. (2001). Recursive position estimation in sensor networks. In Proceeding of 9th international conferecne on network protocols (pp. 35–41).

  9. Choudhury, R. R., & Vaidya, N. H. (2004). Deafness: A MAC problem in ad hoc networks when using directional antennas. In Proceeding of 12th IEEE international conference on network protocols (ICNP 2004) (pp. 283–292).

  10. Li, Y., Li, M., Shu, W. & Wu, M. (2007). FFT-DMAC: A tone based MAC protocol with directional antennas. In Proceeding of IEEE global telecommunications conference (GLBECOM) (pp. 3661–3665).

  11. Rahimi, R., Dadashzadeh, G., Jedari, E., & Maleki, M. (2009). An auxiliary tone based MAC scheme for high density ad hoc networks with directional antennas. In Proceeding of 15th conference on Asia-Pacific communications (pp. 762–765).

  12. Dai, H. N., Ng, K. W., & Wu, M. Y. (2007). A busy-tone based MAC scheme for wireless ad hoc networks using directional antennas. In Proceeding of IEEE global telecommunications conference (GLBECOM) (pp. 4969–4973).

  13. Korakis, T., Jakllari, G., & Tassiulas, L. (2008). CDR-MAC: A protocol for full exploitation of directional antennas in ad hoc wireless networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 7, 145–155.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Feng,J., Ren, P., & Yan, S. (2009). A deafness free MAC protocol for ad hoc networks using directional antennas. In Proceeding of 4th IEEE industrial electronics and applications conference (ICIEA) (pp. 449–454).

  15. Arora, A., & Krunz, M. (2005). Interference-limited MAC protocol for MANETs with directional antennas. In Proceeding of WOWMOM (pp. 2–10).

  16. Pourgolzari, V., & Ghorashi, S. A. (2011). A CDMA based MAC protocol for ad hoc networks with directional antennas. In Proceeding of 2011 international symposium on computer networks and distributed systems (CNDS) (pp. 73–77).

  17. Abdullah, A. A., Cai, L., & Debali, F. (2012). Dual sensing directional MAC protocol for ad hoc networks with directional antennas. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 61, 1266–1275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Tay, Y. C., & Chua, K. C. (2001). A capacity analysis for the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. Wireless Networks, 7, 159–171.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Lin, G., Noubir, G.,& Rajaraman, R. (2004). Mobility models for ad hoc network simulation. In Proceedings of international conference on computer communications (IEEE INFOCOM) (pp. 454–463).

  20. Broch, I., Maltz, D. A., Johnson, U. B., Hu, Y. C., & Jetcheva, I. (1998). A performance comparison of multi-hop wireless ad hoc network routing protocols. In Proceedings of mobile computing and networking (MobiCom 1998) (pp. 85–97).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the editor and anonymous referees for their helpful comments for improving this paper. This research was supported in part by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2016R1D1A1A09918974). Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Sangman Moh (smmoh@chosun.ac.kr).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Chosun University, Gwangju, 501-759, South Korea

    Han Su & Sangman Moh

Authors
  1. Han Su
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sangman Moh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sangman Moh.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Su, H., Moh, S. A Robust Deafness-Free MAC Protocol for Directional Antennas in Ad Hoc Networks. Wireless Pers Commun 96, 1111–1129 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-017-4227-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-017-4227-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation