Throughput performance of V-BLAST-enabled wireless ad hoc networks

This paper studies the throughput performance of wireless ad hoc networks when nodes are equipped with the Vertical Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (V-BLAST) system. To accomplish this task, we present an implementation of V-BLAST in the ns-3 network simulator that is based on the original work of Loyka and Gagnon, who have developed analytical expressions for the average bit error rate of V-BLAST. Such an implementation consists of simple modifications to the IEEE 802.11b that include not only aspects related to SINR and BER computation, but also how clear channel assessment is performed and how the four-way handshake mechanism is set for V-BLAST transmissions. We investigate the average network throughput for random topologies not fully connected under different antenna configurations. Simulation results show that, depending on the antenna configuration, significant quasi-linear network throughput gains can be achieved, especially if the diversity gains of V-BLAST are also exploited.