An Adaptive MAC and Directional Routing Protocol for Ad Hoc Wireless Network Using ESPAR Antenna

Use of directional antenna in the context of ad hoc wireless networks can largely reduce radio interference, thereby improving the utilization of wireless medium. To achieve this, we have proposed an adaptive MAC protocol, where each node keeps certain neighborhood information dynamically so that each node can avoid interference by keeping track of other communicating nodes at that instant of time. Moreover, appropriate mechanism for null steering of directional antennas in user terminals can help exchanging the neighborhood information in presence of on-going communication and can drastically improve the medium utilization through overlapping communications in different directions. Subsequently, we have proposed a modified link-state based table-driven routing protocol that captures the approximate network status periodically without generating lot of control traffic. It uses the directional capability of adaptive antenna for capturing, disseminating and using the network information for directional routing.