Maximizing Throughput for Delay-Constraint Transmissions with Smart Antenna Systems in WLANs

A host can simultaneously transmit or receipt multiple packets on different beams with smart antenna (or Multi-beam antenna) systems. However, the host cannot transmit to its neighboring by one beam and receive from other neighboring by other beam at the same time. Therefore, the transmission scheduling impacts the network performance. With delay constraints of transmission, this paper aims to develop transmission scheduling approaches with smart antenna systems for maximizing the network throughput based on the cluster topology. Initially, two approaches, named Sender-driven Parallel Transmission Procedure and Receiver-driven Parallel Transmission Procedure, build sets of parallel groups which are constructed for multi-beam smart antenna systems by the views of sender and receiver, respectively. Then we propose a scheduling algorithm for multiple transmissions on different beams simultaneously. The approaches also take the differences of transmission rate among simultaneous transmissions by one host into account. Performance study reveals that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing work in terms of network throughput and transmission guarantee.