Currently the deployment of 802.11 wireless networks is largely done through the use of omnidirectional antennas. Yet with a limited amount of shared spectrum available in the 802.11 standard, using omni-directional antennas can result in creating unnecessary interference in the case of unicast communication. This project focuses on characterizing and developing a directional 802.11 network and evaluating it in both mesh and infrastructure mode. We intend to develop novel algorithms that minimize the amount of interference in a network using directionality in order to improve performance and scalability.
We are deploying a campus wide directional network to validate this project. The prototype is based on a phased-array antenna system by Fidelity Comtech Inc.
We are users of Opnet and QualNet Network Simulator. Through the use of these wireless network simulators, we will show that these techniques achieve significant performance gains relative to existing static omni-directional networks.
Michael Buettner, Eric Anderson, Gary Yee, Dola Saha, Doug Sicker, Dirk Grunwald - A Phased Array Antenna Testbed for Evaluating Directionality in Wireless
Networks
MobiEval '07 , San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA, June, 2007
