Angular MAC protocol for wireless ad hoc networks with smart antennas

A new medium access protocol is proposed for enhancing the performance of wireless local area networks (WLANs) by the use of smart antennas. This new protocol makes use of the direction of arrival (DoA) algorithm. In order to apply beam forming with smart antennas, the location of the receiver needs to be correctly determined. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment has previously been proposed for this purpose. However, the GPS system, which uses satellites, cannot be applied for WLANs that are most of the time deployed in indoor environments. Therefore, we propose a direction finding (DF) algorithm through which stations exchange training messages to determine their respective locations. With the help of this algorithm, a new MAC protocol based on the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard is proposed to coordinate communication between stations with smart antennas in a WLAN. The goal of the proposed protocol is to maximize the performance of WLANs, by making use of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) properties and space division multiple access (SDMA).