Joint Optimization of Smart Antenna System and Wireless Mesh Network

Various network architectures are evolved into the next generation wireless system to provide better services, such as wireless mesh networks (WMNs). However, single radio node mesh operating on a single channel suffers from capacity limiting. Multiple radio nodes mesh can obviously improve the network capacity, but the network is susceptible to spatial interference. Smart antennas are therefore employed to overcome such problem in this paper. A multiple-beam with circular RTS scheme is proposed to solve the "deafness" problem, which includes two parts: 1) expanding single interface to multi-interfaces in a node for simultaneous communicating with multiple nodes; 2) employing the circular RTS scheme for quick establishing communication with multiple nodes. This scheme is simulated by OPNET 14.5 and MATLAB R2007a. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme not only improve the network throughput but also solve the deafness problem.