Directional Antenna Enhanced Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue will focus on the design of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks with directional antennas. The antennas could have single-beam or multi-beam transmission capabilities. They could be switched  or adaptive antennas. Directional wireless networks bring many benefits such as higher throughput, longer communication range, spatial reuse due to separate communication coverage, interference reduction from neighbors, etc.

This special issue emphasizes the new network architecture, algorithms, and protocols to explore the benefits of directional antennas in multi-hop wireless communications. We would especially encourage research papers in the following topics (other relevant topics are also welcome):

Category 1: New Network Architecture and Applications

• Wireless topology control under directional communications;
• Power control schemes during wireless transmissions;
• Wireless mesh network architecture under multi-beam antennas;
• Neighboring discovery schemes;
• Exciting applications with directional communications;
• MIMO-oriented communication architecture; etc.

Category 2: New Network Algorithms

• Enhanced congestion control algorithms under directional communication loss;
• Channel allocation algorithms under multi-channel or dynamic spectrum access;
• QoS-based Scheduling in either MAC layer or Routing layer;
• MIMO-oriented communication optimization;
• Directional Graph theory for connectivity and coverage;
• Capacity models under directional, asymmetric links; etc.

Category 3: New Network Protocols

• Directional MAC;
• Routing under antenna deafness;
• Capture-aware protocols;
• Cross-layer design protocols;
• Higher layer design (Transport layer, Application Layer, etc.);
• Physical characteristics aware communications (such as considering the antenna beam characteristics, MIMO weight vector change, etc.); and so on.

 

Dr. Sunil Kumar
Dr. Fei Hu
Dr. Michael Medley
Guest Editors