WIRELESS MESH NETWORKING

EXPLOITING SMART ANTENNAS IN WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS USING CONTENTION ACCESS

JOHN A. STINE, THE MITRE CORPORATION
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ABSTRACT
Smart antennas can increase the capacity of mesh networks and reduce the susceptibility of individual nodes to interception and jamming, but creating the conditions that allow them to be effective is difficult. In this article we provide a broad review of antenna technologies and identify their capabilities and limitations. We review mechanisms used by medium access control schemes to arbitrate access. These reviews let us identify a small set of conditions that are necessary for smart antenna exploitation. We then review the most common MAC approaches, carrier sense multiple access, slotted aloha, and time-division multiple access, and evaluate their suitability for exploiting smart antennas. We demonstrate that they are not capable of creating the complete set of antenna exploitation conditions while retaining a contention nature. We follow with a discussion of the Synchronous Collision Resolution (SCR) 1 MAC scheme and describe how it creates all the exploitation conditions. We conclude that SCR provides the best support for smart antenna exploitation with the added benefits that there is no requirement for all nodes to be equipped with the same antenna technologies and that smart antennas can be combined with channelization technologies to provide even higher capacities.

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Smart antennas can increase the capacity of mesh networks and reduce the susceptibility of individual nodes to interception and jamming but creating the conditions that allow them to be effective is difficult.

concerning integrating antenna technologies into mesh networks. In this article we identify the conditions that medium access control (MAC) protocols must create when used with smart antenna technologies. We review several wellknown contention access approaches and compare them against this list of conditions. We conclude that the Synchronous Collision Resolution (SCR) [1, 2] MAC scheme is the only contention MAC protocol of which we are aware that can create all the conditions necessary for smart antenna employment. In turn, we motivate the idea that smart antennas are an enabling technology that will allow SCR to support a scheme where nodes can send or receive more than one packet at a time. Our presentation begins with an overview of antenna technologies. We follow with an overview of the directional MAC dilemma. We list the conditions access protocols must create for their exploitation. We review the most common MAC approaches and identify their inability to create all the conditions. We provide an overview of SCR and its ability to create the exploitation conditions. We then conclude our article.

DIRECTIONAL AND SMART ANTENNAS

Directional transmission and reception is achieved by either creating an antenna geometry to focus in a preferred direction or using an array of antennas to synthesize directionality through constructive and destructive interference. Directionality achieved through the physical geometry of the antenna provides a transmission power gain since energy is focused in a narrow direction rather than dispersed omnidirectionally. Directionality achieved through phase array techniques does not provide a transmission power gain since at best the power achieved in the main beam of the array is the sum of that transmitted from each of the elements. The same signal range could be achieved if the sum of the antenna excitation powers were applied to just one element. The advantage of using arrays is that they are easily steered and their diversity supports much more than simple beam steering. It is rare for directional antennas to have a single beam. Figure 1 illustrates a hypothetical

INTRODUCTION
Directional and smart antennas have been proposed as a means to enhance performance of wireless mesh networks including increasing capacity, increasing the range of communications, reducing the susceptibility of network nodes to detection, interception, and jamming, conserving energy, and resolving collisions. Properties of antennas that have been identified to support these benefits include antenna directivity, increased gain, and a host of capabilities enabled with arrayed antennas and signal processing techniques including beam forming, null steering, diversity, spatial processing, and multiple input multiple output (MIMO). Exploiting these physical layer capabilities, however, generally requires access schemes that are specifically designed for this purpose. Creating these protocols has been the dominant direction in research

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power pattern (in two dimensions for simplicity) and the parameters we use to define the quality of a directional antenna. The directivity of the main beam may be defined in terms of the half power beamwidth (HPBW) or beamwidth between first nulls (BWFN). The selectivity of the directional antenna is the ratio of the main beam maximum gain to the gain of the largest sidelobe, the maximum sidelobe level (MSLL). The mobility of some nodes in mesh networks will cause the relative direction between nodes to change, and the randomness of traffic will cause the instantaneous pointing solutions to be similarly random. Under these conditions, exploiting directional antennas requires some sort of intelligence to discern where to point the antennas and mechanisms to subsequently point them in those directions. Antennas that can do this are considered smart. Smart antennas have varying levels of intelligence. This intelligence is frequently divided into three levels: switched beam, dynamic phased array, and adaptive array [3]. A review of the differences, capabilities, and limitations of each follows.

BWFN FL HL HPBW 1 HL FR

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n Figure 1. Typical power pattern polar plot of a

directional antenna. along a line with equal spaces between them. The array factor of a linear array results in a beam pattern that sweeps about the axis producing a toroid shape. When the array factor is combined with the power pattern of dipole elements (i.e., a toroid) that are normal to the array axis, then the results are conical beams that mirror each other across the array axis and are normal to the antenna elements. Antenna elements that are directional to the half plane can be arranged to produce a single main beam that can be swept across that half plane. Figure 3 illustrates the effects of array size and element spacing on the array factor. In these illustrations we use the tuple ( N , d , ) to specify the antenna design where N is the number of elements, d is the spacing between the elements in units of , the wavelength, and is the angle from endfire that the main beam is being steered. The overall width of the array determines the beamwidth of the main beam. The spacing and number of elements in the array determines the number of sidelobes and mainbeams. Steering the mainbeam affects directivity. As the mainbeam deviates from broadside, the beamwidth and MSLL increase. Many implementations of linear arrays in cellular towers use directional elements and sweep the mainbeam 60 from broadside. Three arrays are used to cover all directions. The circular arrays in which we are interested are formed by placing like antenna elements equally spaced apart on a circle. The advantage of a circular array is that it creates just one mainbeam that can be swept fully around the circle. Similar to linear arrays, antenna size determines the width of the mainbeam and the quantity and spacing of elements determines the number of sidelobes. Figure 4 illustrates some array factors. Note that the relative direction of the beam compared to the location of the elements can cause a nonsymmetric pattern with some relatively large sidelobes. The planar arrays in which we are interested are formed by placing linear arrays equally spaced apart. The effects of the number of elements and their spacing are the same as those for linear arrays except they now apply in two dimensions, which results in an array factor that produces beams that are conical fingers rather than toroidal and have lower MSLL.

SWITCHED BEAM ANTENNAS

In switched beam antennas, there is a predefined set of directions in which an antenna can be pointed. This type of antenna may be created using multiple directional elements, each pointed toward different sectors, where direction is chosen by choosing the element. Alternatively, it can be created using an antenna array which we discuss further in the next section. In wireless networks it is frequently necessary to transmit omnidirectionally. There is a misperception that this can be accomplished using sectored antennas by transmitting on all of the directional elements simultaneously. Such a scenario is likely to create an undesirable radiation pattern due to the constructive and destructive interference that occurs in multiple antenna systems. Real implementations of these types of antenna systems use a single omnidirectional antenna element for omnidirectional broadcasts. This use of different antennas can result in a difference in range for omnidirectional and directional transmissions. This difference must be accounted for in access protocol design and normally requires some sort of power control.

In switched beam antennas, there is a predefined set of directions in which an antenna can be pointed. This type of antenna may be created using multiple directional elements, each pointed toward different sectors, where direction is chosen by choosing the element.

DYNAMICALLY PHASED ARRAYS

An array of antenna elements can be pointed in a direction by changing the phase of the signals emitted from each element so that they arrive on the wavefront in the preferred direction at the same time, thus constructively interfering in the pointing direction and destructively interfering in most if not all other directions. The power pattern of an array antenna is the product of the power pattern of the individual elements, assuming the same pattern for each element, and the power pattern of the array factor which accounts for the constructive and destructive interference. Although any arrangement of antennas can be used, the most typical would be linear, circular, and planar arrays. Figure 2 illustrates the differences. The linear arrays in which we are interested are formed by placing like antenna elements

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z x d y x dz x d y dy y

n Figure 2. Main beam pointing directions of linear, circular, and planar

arrays. Linear arrays and linear planar arrays have spatial qualities that make them the spatial equivalent of finite impulse response (FIR) filters. Thus, techniques developed to reduce sidelobe levels in FIR filters are applicable to these arrays. Tapering the amplitude of the signals from the center of the array outward reduces the sidelobe levels with the effect of also increasing the mainbeam width. Figure 5 illustrates the effects of uniform weighting and two tapering techniques, triangular and binomial, used with linear arrays. Sidelobe levels can be reduced substantially. A nice feature of these techniques is that the amplitude weighting of the signals is not affected by the direction in which the beams are pointed and can be fixed. The enhancement in intelligence that comes with dynamically phased arrays is the ability to determine direction of arrival (DOA) of signals and then the subsequent pointing of the antenna in that direction for better reception. Direction of arrival is determined by either scanning the beam and finding the direction to the strongest signal or employing a statistical processing technique (e.g., minimum variance distortionless response [MVDR] [4], multiple signal classification [MUSIC] [5], or estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques [ESPRIT] [6]). All of these techniques require time to adapt to an incoming signal. If more than one signal is present, it may not be possible to discern in which direction to subsequently point the antenna because of either the resolution of the antenna or ambiguity as to which signal is intended for the receiver.

We are not inferring that multipath is required. In the absence of multipath, the environment is just the directions to the source and interfering transmitters. However, adaptation techniques that depend on multipath (e.g., MIMO) become beam steering or null steering at best.

ADAPTIVE ANTENNA ARRAYS

The increased intelligence of adaptive arrays includes algorithms for reducing interference by steering nulls or spatially whitening it. A nice summary of techniques for this purpose can be found in [7]. We describe one technique for purposes of illustrating issues. The technique to maximize signal to interference plus noise ratio

(SINR) uses the correlation matrix of the interfering signals (i.e., signals arriving from the directions toward which we want to point nulls) plus noise, R, and the signal vector of the desired signal, s, (i.e., a signal arriving from the direction in which we want to point the mainbeam) to choose weights of the antenna elements, wopt = R1s. Given this knowledge of where to point the mainbeam and the nulls, both a correlation matrix and a signal vector can be formulated to choose weights. In transmission, this requires knowledge of the direction to a destination and the direction to receivers with which a transmission might interfere. In reception this requires knowledge of the direction to interfering sources and the desired source. In each case this knowledge cannot be generated by the physical layer alone. In transmission all knowledge must be provided by access and networking protocols. In reception a correlation matrix can be accumulated by listening to the channel without the desired signal. The direction to the source must be provided by the protocols. Figure 6 illustrates a beam pattern using the max SINR method to steer nulls using linear antennas. We use the tuple (N, d, , 0, 1, ) to define the conditions, where N, d, and are as defined before, and the i are the directions for the desired nulls. We have three observations: 1 The number of nulls that can be pointed is limited, always less than the number of elements in the array. 2 Steering nulls deviates from the practice of choosing phases so that element signal amplitudes simply add in the mainbeam direction. It is not possible to steer the mainbeam and nulls simultaneously. As a result, achieving the same transmission gain in the mainbeam direction as simple beam steering requires more power, 15 times more in the example of Fig. 6, and may result in an MSLL greater than 0 dB, 8 dB in Fig. 6. 3 The nulls apply to a narrow range of directions, and the steering direction may not be centered in a lobe, so an error in steering the nulls is much less forgiving than those when steering only the mainbeam. In Fig. 6 a pointing error of less than 4 can change a > 200 dB SINR to less than 0 dB. It is important to have current information when steering nulls. The techniques above follow from sterile environments with line-of-sight paths between transmitters and receivers. Most real environments are challenged by obstructions and reflective surfaces that lead to multipath. Multiple copies of a signal from the same source impinge at each antenna element arriving from many different directions. Antenna arrays are seen as a tool not only to resolve the incoming signals but also to exploit the environment to spatially isolate signals of each user. We refer to these techniques as environmental adaptation since the unique characteristics of the environment can contribute to isolating the signal. 2 We broadly separate environmental adaptation techniques into two different types: those that are implemented in reception only, environmental adaptation in reception (EAR), and those that are implemented in both reception and transmission,

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In MIMO, each element of the array transmits a unique (non-orthogonal) data stream under the assumption that multipath scattering decorrelates the transmitted signals creating multiple independent channels effectively increasing the channel capacity.

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n Figure 3. Example array factors for different linear array designs.

environmental adaptation in reception and transmission (EART). In EAR receivers use known characteristics of signals intended for themselves to identify and optimize their reception. The challenge in these approaches is to find a reference signal correlated with the desired signal and uncorrelated with interfering signals. Ward and Compton propose such a scheme in [8] that uses a two-part preamble where the first part supports acquisition and the second, beamforming. We describe this approach in the next section. It is envisioned that such algorithms can resolve collisions and enable a receiver to recover multiple packets received simultaneously. [9] These techniques can be employed without any changes in radio frequency (RF) emissions. The assumption, however, is that the environment remains nearly the same for the entire reception. EART, on the other hand, uses the spatial signatures of received signals to choose weights for transmitted responses under the assumption that propagation paths are reciprocal. These types of methods require a two-step adaptation where destinations are required to transmit so that sources can learn their signature. A concern in this process is how the weighted transmissions affect interference conditions for neighbors, the point of our discussion of Fig. 6. Access mechanisms need to enable transmitters to discern where not to transmit. A special case of environmental adaptation is MIMO. In MIMO each element of the array transmits a unique (nonorthogonal) data stream under the assumption that multipath scattering decorrelates the transmitted signals, creating multiple independent channels, effectively increasing the channel capacity. To implement these schemes requires training at the receiver and in some implementations feedback to the transmitter so that it can adjust the transmission scheme as appropriate for the environment.

THE ANTENNA ADAPTATION MODEL, MAC PERSPECTIVE

It is instructive to have a basic model for antenna adaptation to understand the requirements for MAC protocols to enable their exploitation. We use a modeling approach first proposed in [8]. Figure 7 illustrates the timeline of a received packet. A training sequence at the front end of a

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MAC protocols exploit carrier and virtual sensing to arbitrate contention. Carrier sensing is used to prevent new transmissions by nodes that sense the carrier. Virtual sensing is the use of information in packet headers to direct neighboring nodes to defer from contention for some period

packet is used by the antenna to adapt. Adaptation occurs in two parts. First the antenna captures the desired signal, which occurs at the beginning of the sequence, and then the antenna optimizes reception of that signal in the adaptation period that follows. Several criteria must be met for adaptation to be successful. There are five parameters: ts the time after the first arriving bit of the training sequence that it takes for a transceiver to capture a desired signal SIR c the minimum signal interference ratio (SIR) required to capture a signal tsm the minimum time required by a smart antenna to adapt to an interfering signal t f the end of the training sequence used for adaptation SIRa the minimum SIR required to adapt to a signal for either enhancing or nulling Let t a be the time an interfering signal arrives at the receiver. The antenna can determine the DOA if SIR > SIR c when t a < t s ,

SIR > SIR a when t s t a t f, and t a > t f. An adaptive antenna can reject interfering signals if SIR > SIR c when t a < t s, SIR > SIR a when t s t a t f, and t a t f t sm. The significant difference between a DOA adaptation (i.e., beam steering) and an EAR adaptation (i.e., null steering) is that the DOA adaptation only needs to adapt to the signal of interest, while EAR must also adapt to the interfering signals. In EAR modeling adaptation also depends on whether the quantity of interfering signals are within the adaptation threshold of the antenna. In the next two sections, we use this adaptation timing model to identify the conditions a MAC protocol must create for successful antenna adaptation.

SUMMARY
The main points of this review of antenna technologies are: 1 Arrayed antennas create directionality through constructive and destructive interference, and so do not create a power gain as does a geometrically directional antenna (e.g., a Yagi).

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n Figure 4. Example array factors for different circular array designs. Elements are evenly spaced around

the circle with two being equidistant from the = 0 vector. The vector = 45 points toward an element in the 12-element array and is a third of the way between elements for the 6-element array.

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2 Antenna radiation patterns consist of mainbeams and multiple sidelobes, all of which should be considered in the analysis of antenna effects. 3 FIR filter techniques can be used in linear arrays to reduce sidelobes with the trade-off of a wider mainbeam. 4 Arrayed antennas can adapt by pointing either the mainbeam toward a source or nulls toward interfering nodes, but cannot do both simultaneously. 5 Adaptive antennas must sample signals from the sites that are nulled, and the number of sites that can be nulled is limited by the number of elements in the array. 6 Antennas that have adapted to optimize SINR may have a higher gain in directions away from the source, making receivers very susceptible to new interference in those directions.

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THE DIRECTIONAL MAC DILEMMA

The dilemma in exploiting smart antennas is that to obtain their primary benefit, increased capacity, protocols must allow closer formation of source-destination (SD) pairs, but achieving these closer formations requires relaxation of the carrier and virtual sensing mechanisms on which most popular contention mechanisms are based. In this section we review the concepts of carrier sensing, virtual sensing, and capture that are germane to this problem.

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n Figure 5. Comparison of amplitude tapering techniques with a (10,.5,90) linear array. er. Figure 8a illustrates an example of these regions emanating omnidirectionally from a node. Here, the carrier sensing region subsumes the packet sensing region. The size of the regions and the relative range to the boundaries are affected by the transmission power, receiver thresholds, and, in the case of packet sensing, the presence of interference. We also illustrate the interference region subsuming both sensing regions; however, its true boundary is affected by the strength of the received signal with the relation that the stronger the signal, the closer the interfering transmitter must be to be disruptive. Unlike what is drawn, environmental effects cause these boundaries to be irregular and sometimes disconnected. MAC protocols exploit carrier and virtual sensing to arbitrate contention. Carrier sensing

SENSING AND INTERFERENCE

There are two regions about a transmitter, a packet sensing region (APS) in which nodes can receive packets, and a carrier sensing region (ACS) in which nodes can detect a transmission. Similarly, there are three regions about receivers: the same packet and carrier sensing regions, but defining where transmissions can originate and be sensed by the receiver; and a third region, an interference region ( A I), in which transmitters may cause unwanted interference to the receiv-

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n Figure 6. Array factor of the null steering case (8,.5,100,30,60) of a linear array using max SINR normalized to a gain of 0 dB in the
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Capture ts

Adaptation tf

Packet t

density of SD pairs but may increase their success rate, and thus network capacity. Also, MIMO may be used to increase the achievable data rate for these pairs and thus the capacity.

n Figure 7. Packet frame format for antenna adaptation.

is used to prevent new transmissions by nodes that sense the carrier. Virtual sensing is the use of information in packet headers (e.g., the network allocation vector of the 802.11 MAC) to direct neighboring nodes to defer from contention for some period (i.e., the duration of the upcoming packet exchange). Its range is equivalent to the packet sensing range. Figure 8b illustrates the overlap of the regions that are exploited by the 802.11 MAC when using the request to send (RTS)clear to send (CTS)protocol data unit (PDU)acknowledgment (ACK) and when all transmissions use the same power. When functioning properly, the virtual sensing mechanism of the RTS-CTS exchange suppresses new exchanges from originating or terminating in the packet sensing regions ( A PS-S APS-D).3 The PDU exchange would only be interfered with by transmitters in (AI-D AI-D (ACSS A PS-D )). The ACK exchange could be interfered with by transmitters in (AI-S AI-S ( A CS-S A PS-D )). Directional antennas can potentially improve MAC performance by reducing the size of these areas, thus enabling greater spatial reuse; however, the asymmetry of the regions suppressed by carrier and virtual sensing may allow over-the-shoulder types of interference as illustrated in Fig. 9 and an increase in deafness and muteness failures. (See Appendix A for a listing of MAC failure mechanisms.) An alternative is to combine omnidirectional and directional transmissions in the contention exchanges. Under this approach, omnidirectional transmissions separate the SD pairs and the directional transmissions attempt to reduce the interference region to be within the omnidirectional virtual sensing region (i.e., cause (AI-D (APS-S APS-D) = AI-D) and (AI-S (APS-S APS-D) = AIS )). Thus, this technique does not increase the
AI ACS ACS-S

CAPTURE
Capture is the ability of a receiver to isolate and receive a transmission in an environment with interference. This ability to isolate the desired signal can be enhanced through the use of antennas, which is the purpose of EAR. Its significance is that it changes the need for access protocols to prevent interference, to just creating conditions where SD pairs can capture each others signals. Traditional access mechanisms designed to prevent interference may limit the benefit of using smart antennas. Access protocols should cause SD pairs to be closer as capture allows.

NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR ANTENNA EXPLOITATION

From the description of radiation patterns, the dilemma above, and the timing diagram of Fig. 7 we can identify the conditions MAC protocols must create to enable antenna exploitation. There are two conditions when just pointing directional antennas. They are deceptively simple: 1 Know where to point. The protocol must enable contenders to determine where destinations are. 2 Know where not to point. The protocol must enable contenders to avoid destinations that are busy or deferring because of virtual sensing, and to avoid interfering with ongoing exchanges. Avoiding interference can be difficult because of the variability of radiation patterns. Although a transmitter points its mainbeam away from a receiver, it does not preclude there being harmful interference through the sidelobes. The relative separation that can be achieved between SD pairs is dependent on the specific directions between the transceivers, the environment, and the antenna technology being used.
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The hyphenated extension in the subscript identifies whether the area is associated with the source, S, or the destination, D.

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n Figure 8. Protocol sensing and interference regions.

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There are also four conditions for exploiting adaptive antennas to improve capture. They are less obvious: 3 Acquire the condition. The protocol must enable the adaptive antennas to acquire the conditions for determining the weighting of the antenna elements. Changing conditions mean weights will have a short lifetime, so the MAC should enable weight determination in close proximity to the time they are used. 4 Prevent congestion. Antenna arrays have limited degrees of freedom to cancel out interfering nodes. 5 Prevent coincident transmission. Adaptive antennas have an angular resolution and cannot differentiate transmitters in the same or near same direction. 6 Preserve the condition. The protocol must keep the weighting relevant for the duration of its use. Protocols may not be able to prevent movement of nodes and of objects in the environment but it should prevent new interference.

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Interference region assumes maximum antenna gain from the interfering node

n Figure 9. Potential over-the shoulder contentions may occur when using

directional antennas with an RTS-CTS-ACK-PDU scheme. The new source is not suppressed by carrier or virtual sensing. Such contentions are likely to have muted destinations and can interfere with ongoing exchanges.

USING ANTENNAS WITH COMMON MAC PROTOCOLS

DETERMINING DIRECTION
Contending nodes must determine direction prior to contention and so must employ a technique to collect direction information. A protocol can track either the locations of nodes or the directions from which transmissions have been received. Destinations can either use collected information or use a reception that is part of the contention to determine direction. The method employed is technology-dependent. Although very important, our review of MAC protocol techniques does not emphasize this activity since our focus is on the conditions MACs create to enable antenna exploitation. We assume in most of our discussion that contenders know the direction to destinations.

Asynchronous access protocols such as carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) are not suitable for adaptive antenna use. Access is arbitrated by time of contention, so conditions 3 and 6 are not achievable. Conditions are likely to change throughout a reception, rendering adaptations at the start of an exchange inappropriate for the duration. As illustrated in Fig. 6, adaptations can make receivers more susceptible to new interference.

SLOTTED ALOHA
The sole failure mechanism of the slotted aloha protocol is collisions, so it benefits from using directional antennas. Anything that reduces the footprint of transmissions will reduce the occurrence of collisions. Less obvious is its suitability to exploit smart antennas. The synchronous nature of access attempts creates conditions 3 and 6. The feasibility of exploiting smart antennas with slotted aloha is described in [8, 9]. In [8] Ward and Compton proposed the packet frame with the two-part acquisition preamble illustrated in Fig. 7. As long as the adaptation criteria are met, the destinations can adapt and resolve collisions. Unfortunately, a deficiency of slotted aloha schemes is that they provide no mechanisms to achieve conditions 4 and 5.

CARRIER SENSE MULTIPLE ACCESS/COLLISION AVOIDANCE PROTOCOLS

There are multiple combinations of using directional and omnidirectional transmissions with the RTS-CTS-PDU-ACK handshake. We reviewed the issues earlier. The more directional antennas are used, the less efficient the carrier and virtual sensing mechanisms. The troubles are best categorized as condition 2 problems. On their own, these protocols do not provide sufficient information to prevent new contenders from interfering with ongoing exchanges. Techniques to address these shortcomings are to use receiver busy tones or add information into the packets. If nodes can determine the direction to a receiver busy tone, they can avoid contending to send packets in those directions. Information such as the location of SD pairs and the interference allowed at receivers can be used by contending nodes to determine whether they will interfere. Both approaches require the MAC to have explicit knowledge of their antenna power patterns. Rather than the intelligence being in the antennas, it is in the MAC protocol.

SCHEDULED TIME-DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS PROTOCOLS

Time-division multiple access (TDMA) schemes are not contention schemes. When used in wireless networks where contention is appropriate, it is half of a protocol that alternates between contention and contention-free periods. The contention-free period is the TDMA portion of the protocol, and the contention period is either an aloha or a CSMA type of protocol. The assumption in using TDMA is that each contention leads to a schedule that persists long enough to make creating a schedule worthwhile. Scheduling transmissions in a TDMA mesh network is made challenging by changing conditions in both traffic patterns and the mobility of some users. Incorporating directional antennas complicates the scheduling. Implementation requires information exchange concerning location of transmitters and receivers. Again, the intelligence to create conditions 1 and 2 are in the protocol.

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RTS CR signaling

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n Figure 10. Basic implementation of the Synchronous Collision Resolution MAC protocol.
port smart antenna use. For reasons of cost, this is not desirable, especially for user nodes.

SYNCHRONOUS COLLISION RESOLUTION

Synchronous Collision Resolution (SCR) uses a unique access mechanism that creates a network-wide access solution with two outcomes that enable antenna exploitation. It resolves to a set of contenders that are separated from each other, and it holds that geometry until the next contention. We show that this approach creates the conditions necessary to exploit adaptive antennas in both reception and transmission.

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then signaling resolves a subset of these contenders in panel b, where all the surviving contenders are separated from each other by at least the range of their signals. Large nodes are contenders.

DESCRIPTION
The basic implementation of the SCR MAC is illustrated in Fig. 10. It has four key characteristics: 1 The wireless channel is slotted. 2 All nodes with packets to transmit attempt to gain access every transmission slot. 3 Contending nodes use signaling to arbitrate their access. 4 All packet transmissions that occur during a transmission slot are sent simultaneously. Design choices that determine the capabilities of SCR are the size and framing of transmission slots, the use of the RTS-CTS handshake packets, and the specific details of signaling.

It is possible for a TDMA schedule to meet all of the adaptation conditions. Receivers can adapt since transmissions start at the same time and the adaptation remains valid for an entire packet reception. The scheduling process, however, still has to create conditions 4 and 5. Even though the adaptation conditions are possible for EAR, TDMA does not support environmental adaptation in transmission unless additional transmissions are built into the protocol for the transmitters to obtain the appropriate weighting.

CREATING A TRANSMITTER GEOMETRY

Each transmission slot begins with collision resolution signaling (CRS). Its role is to determine which nodes among all the contenders in the network should be permitted to send a packet in the transmission slot. Figure 11 illustrates the result. A subset of contenders from all contenders in the network is selected. Contenders in this subset are separated from each other. CRS consists of a series of signaling slots organized into groups of slots called phases in which contending nodes may send very short signals.4 The simplest and generally most effective at arbitrating contention is illustrated in Fig. 12, and consists of one signaling slot per phase. In this design a probability is assigned to each signaling slot, and a contending node will signal in that slot with that probability. The rules of signaling in this design are as follows: 1 At the beginning of each signaling phase a contending node determines if it will signal. It will signal with the probability assigned to the slot of that phase.

SUMMARY OBSERVATION
None of these standard access mechanisms are perfectly suited for directional and smart antenna use. Only in TDMA is it feasible to create all exploitation conditions, but some portion of those conditions must be created by intelligence implemented in the MAC or a higher layer protocol that involves the collection and distribution of information. In other words, these protocols do not create a contention that resolves to a physical distribution of SD pairs that can exploit smart antennas. There are two issues with scheduling protocols. First, creating schedules lags the traffic demand and thus will not provide the benefit of statistical multiplexing, which is the objective in contention protocols. Second, using intelligence higher in the protocol stack that requires information exchange between nodes makes it necessary that all nodes employ this same technology. There must be a commitment at deployment that the network will sup-

The size of the signaling slots and the duration of the signals are selected to prevent ambiguity as to when signals are sent that may result from propagation delays or potential inaccuracies in synchronization.

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2 A contender survives a phase by signaling in a slot or by not signaling and not hearing another contenders signal. A contender that does not signal and hears another contenders signal loses the contention and defers from contending any further in that transmission slot. 3 Nodes that survive all phases win the contention. There are two performance measures for a CRS design. The first is how well it arbitrates contention among nodes in range of each other. This is purely a function of design. A design approach is proposed in [1] that chooses signaling probabilities to maximize the single survivor probability for when there are k t contenders, S ( k t), with the constraint S ( k ) S ( k t) k k t. Figure 13 illustrates the performance of this design approach using k t = 50. If we use 4 signaling slots, there is better than 0.83 probability that there will be just one survivor at the conclusion of signaling, and better than probabilities of 0.91 with 5 slots, 0.96 with 6 slots, 0.97 with 7 slots, 0.985 with 8 slots, and 0.995 with 9 slots. In fact, with 9 slots, signaling can achieve a probability of one survivor > 0.99 with as many as 450 nodes contending. For most practical networks, this is good enough. This feature makes it immune to congestion collapse (Appendix A) and achieves the fourth adaptation condition. Further, CRS is very fair where each node is likely to gain access with at least 1/n probability, n being the number of contending neighbors. The second performance measure is how well CRS separates survivors. Simulations in [1] demonstrated that the probability that the closest neighboring survivor to a signaling survivor is beyond a signals range is approximately the S(k) predicted in its design. Most closest survivors were separated by less than 1.5 times the range of the radio. This performance was the same for all practical network densities. CRS yields a density of survivors of about 1.4 survivors/transmission area5 for random contender densities 10. From any destinations perspective, signaling survivors are in diverse directions, thus achieving the fifth adaptation condition. At the conclusion of CRS is an RTS-CTS exchange. Its purpose is to be a feedback mechanism for adaptation and to verify capture so that only feasible PDU-ACK exchanges occur. The synchronous nature of SCR together with the RTS-CTS exchange creates the third adaptation condition. Since there are no additional contentions during the PDU-ACK exchange, SCR provides the sixth adaptation condition.

Assertion signals

Signaling slots Signaling phases 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

n Figure 12. Collision resolution signaling using single slot phases.

identifies the source, looks up the direction to the source, and points its antenna toward that direction for all subsequent exchanges in the transmission slot. Adaptive pointing: A contender starts out by transmitting omnidirectionally or pointing its antenna toward where it thinks the destination is. The destination receives the RTS using a phased array antenna and uses a direction of arrival (DOA) algorithm to determine the direction to the transmitter. It points its antenna as soon as possible in that direction for the remainder of the transmission slot. The source uses the destinations CTS transmission and the same DOA method to refine its pointing toward the destination. EAR: A contender starts out by transmitting omnidirectionally or pointing its antenna toward where it thinks the destination is. The destination uses an adaptation technique to optimize reception of the arriving signal. However, the destination transmits using simple pointing. The source adapts to the destinations signal. EART: A contender starts out by pointing its antenna toward where it thinks the destination is. The destination uses an adaptation technique to optimize reception of the arriving signal. The destination uses these weights in transmitting its CTS. The source optimizes its reception of the destinations signal and uses these weights to transmit the PDU. Note that in the derivation of the weights at each step there are signals from the subsequent receivers, so there is information on where not to point. In all of these approaches the basic access mechanism remains the same. Any one of the technologies can be employed at any node without any requirement for all nodes to have the capability. This is so because adaptations occur in the physical layer, and each adaptation contributes to the collective benefit of reduced interference.

SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

A high-resolution simulation model of SCR using directional antennas was created in OPNET and is described in [10]. It presents results of experiments of each of the pointing techniques above, considering different antenna performance characteristics. These simulations assume that signal range is equivalent to the maximum range to which a packet might be routed and that the gain of the mainbeam of a directional antenna was equivalent to the omnidirectional gain. Experiments demonstrated that in simple pointing schemes selectivity is more important than directivity in the BWFN range of 60 down to 10 until the MSLL is less than 15

ANTENNA EXPLOITATION METHODS

SCR provides multiple approaches to managing directional antennas. In this implementation of SCR smart antennas would be used at the conclusion of CRS. We describe four different approaches to exploit smart antennas. Simple pointing: Assumes nodes know their location and the location of their neighbors, and only uses this information to point their antennas. A contender starts out by pointing its antenna toward the destination. The destination receives the RTS using an omnidirectional antenna and with the information in the RTS

A transmission area is the surface area covered by a transmission from a radio. It is the area of a circle with a radius of one transmission range.

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7 slots 1

8 slots

9 slots

6 slots 0.95 5 slots P(one survivor) 0.9

uled Medium Access (DSUMA), which uses this type of CRS to coordinate the pointing of switched beam antennas. Contenders signal with beams toward their intended destinations, and destinations echo those signals omnidirectionally. Directional and omnidirectional signals are assumed to have the same range. At the conclusion of CRS, the SD pairs point toward each other. This CRS resolves to a high density of SD pairs that will increase with antenna directionality and selectivity. This scheme does not require all nodes to have switched beam capability.

0.85

CONCLUSION
4 slots

0.8

0.75 0 10 20 30 Number of contenders 40 50

n Figure 13. Performance of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 single-slot phase CRS designs

optimized for a contender density of 0 to 50 contenders. dB, at which point directivity becomes more important. The pointing techniques all provide improvements over using just omnidirectional antennas, up to five times greater capacity, and those that have an effect earliest in the handshake during the transmission of the RTS were most successful. So adaptive pointing and EAR were more effective than simple pointing. EART, which is no different than EAR in the RTS exchange, offered little improvement over EAR. SCR can also solve the channelization problem and mitigate the near-far effect as reported in [11]. So we experimented with the combined effect of using processing gain and smart antennas with SCR. We found that the effect of the antennas is not noticeable once the processing gain exceeds 15 dB. However, the combination of SCR, code-division multiple access (CDMA), and smart antennas creates the opportunity to support a very different packet exchange paradigm. Rather than just a single peer-to-peer exchange per contention, nodes could send or receive multiple packets simultaneously that are isolated through the combination of code and spatial multiplexing. Such a capability would be very attractive at a mesh network access point.

We have reviewed the issues in exploiting smart antennas in mesh networks and identified conditions necessary for their exploitation. We described the legacy contention MAC protocols and reviewed their potential to exploit directional and smart antennas. Asynchronous access protocols such as 802.11 are especially handicapped and cannot provide two critical conditions for adaptation. Synchronous protocols are better suited. Slotted aloha partially solves the required adaptation conditions, so smart antennas will improve its performance. TDMA solutions can create all the conditions, but at the expense of being less effective at supporting contention access and requiring a commitment to supporting smart antennas at network deployment. We describe how newer Synchronous Collision Resolution MAC protocols are ideally suited. These contention-based access schemes create all the conditions necessary for antenna exploitation. They can be used with any combination of antenna technologies, thus supporting the incremental deployment of smart antennas in a mesh network. Furthermore, through the combined use of SCR, CDMA, and smart antennas, it is possible to support a one-to-many and many-to-one packet exchange paradigm.

APPENDIX A MAC PROTOCOL FAILURE MECHANISMS

Failure mechanisms in access protocols are artifacts of the techniques that are used to resolve contention. Below we describe the most common. 1) Collisions occur when a receiver cannot receive because of interference. There are two types of collisions, primary and secondary. Primary collisions occur when a node is expected to participate in more than one packet exchange at the same time. Secondary collisions occur when an exchange is interfered with by a distant exchange. 2) Hidden terminals are an artifact of asynchronous carrier sensing mechanisms. A hidden terminal occurs when a contender in range of a destination of an ongoing exchange is not suppressed by either carrier sensing or virtual sensing. As a result, its contention interferes with the ongoing exchange. 3) Exposed terminals are an artifact of asynchronous carrier and virtual sensing mechanisms.

DIRECTIONAL SYNCHRONIZED UNSCHEDULED MEDIUM ACCESS

As reported in [1], there is an alternative approach to designing CRS in which noncontenders echo contenders signals. This CRS approach extends signalings effect two hops, preventing any contenders from being in range of destinations. This separation eliminates the need for the RTS-CTS exchange, but would also appear to prevent any opportunity to increase the density of SD pairs. However, Grace et al. [12] propose Directional Synchronized Unsched-

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An exposed terminal is a contender that cannot gain access to a channel since it always senses another exchange in disjoint parts of the network. 4) Misdirected contention is an artifact of asynchronous access schemes and occurs when a contender attempts to send a packet to an ineligible receiver, a receiver suppressed by virtual sensing (a.k.a. muteness) or carrier sensing another exchange. 5) Deafness is a failure of asynchronous virtual sensing. It occurs when interference prevents the packet sensing that is necessary for virtual sensing. As a result, a contender may not defer from contending as would have been appropriate and causes a collision. 6) Blocking can occur in a contention access protocol where destinations are not involved in the contention resolution mechanism. Contenders that are out of range of each other but in range of each others destinations repeatedly gain access and interfere with each other. Blocking is most likely to occur in synchronous access schemes that do not randomize access attempts. 7) Retry countouts can occur in any contention access protocol. It is the dropping of packets when a source perceives multiple consecutive successful contentions but failed exchanges. It occurs since it is not possible for a contending node to differentiate the cause of an exchange failure. Failures that result from the destination being out of range, a condition that warrants dropping the packet, have no different signature than those that fail because of any of the failure mechanisms listed above. 8) Congestion collapse can occur in any contention protocol where collisions and other failures occur more frequently as the traffic or density of nodes increases. It is especially harmful if collisions occur during long data exchanges. The throughput decreases since the channel is occupied with transmissions that produce no goodput.

[2] J. Stine and G. de Veciana, A Paradigm for Quality of Service in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Using Synchronous Signaling and Node States, IEEE JSAC, Sept. 2004, pp. 130121. [3] P. Lehne and M. Pettersen, An Overview of Smart Antenna Technology for Mobile Communications Systems, IEEE Commun. Surveys , vol. 2, no. 4, 4th qtr. 1999. [4] J. Capon, High-resolution Frequency-wave Number Spectrum Analysis, Proc. IEEE, vol. 57, Aug 1987, pp. 140818. [5] R. Schmidt, Multiple Emitter Location and Signal Parameter Estimation, IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propagation, vol. 34, Mar. 1986, pp. 27680. [6] R. Roy and T. Kailath, ESPRIT Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotation Invariance Techniques, IEEE Trans on Aerospace and Elect. Sys., vol. 19, Jan. 1983, pp. 13439. [7] B. Van Veen and K. Buckley, Beamforming: A Versatile Approach to Spatial Filtering, IEEE ASSP Mag. , Apr. 1988, pp. 424. [8] J. Ward and R. T. Compton, Jr., Improving the Performance of a Slotted ALOHA Packet Radio Network with an Adaptive Array, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 40, Feb. 1992, pp. 292300. [9] J. Ward and R. T. Compton, Jr., High Throughput Slotted ALOHA Packet Radio Networks with Adaptive Arrays, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 41, Mar. 1993, pp. 46070. [10] J. A. Stine, Modeling Smart Antennas in Synchronous Ad Hoc Networks using OPNETs Pipeline Stages, Proc. OPNETWORK, 2005. [11] J. Stine, Exploiting Processing Gain in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks using Synchronous Collision Resolution Medium Access Control Schemes, Proc. IEEE WCNC , 2005. [12] K. Grace, J. Stine, and R. Durst, An Approach for Modestly Directional Communications in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Springer Telecommun. Sys., Mar./Apr. 2005, pp. 28196.

These contention based access schemes create all the conditions necessary for antenna exploitation. They can be used with any combination of antenna technologies, thus supporting the incremental deployment of smart antennas in a mesh network.

BIOGRAPHIES
JOHN A. STINE [M99] (jstine@mitre.org) received a B.S. in general engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1981. He received M.S. degrees in manufacturing systems and electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austi in 1990, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, also from The University of Texas at Austin, in 2001. He served as an engineer officer in the United States Army for 20 years with relevant assignments as an assistant professor in electrical engineering at West Point and as a lead analyst in the Armys Task Force XXI experiment, which was the Armys first attempt to network a brigade size maneuver force. He has been with The MITRE Corporation in McLean, Virginia, since 2001, where he does research in ad hoc networking and consults on projects concerning ad hoc networking, spectrum management, and modeling and simulation of command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Virginia.

REFERENCES
[1] J. Stine et al., Orchestrating Spatial Reuse in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Using Synchronous Collision Resolution, J. Interconnection Networks, vol. 3 nos. 3 and 4, Sept. and Dec. 2002, pp. 16795.

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