Improving Capacity and Delay in Directional Hybrid Wireless Networks with Range Extension

Abstract

With the introduction of directional antennas into wireless networks, the beamwidth decreases and the range extends; thus both the mutual interference and the number of hops are reduced. This paper investigates the asymptotic throughput capacity and delay of hybrid wireless networks equipped with directional antennas. We first present a new scheme combining directional antennas and the same cell routing policy, and then derive the per-node throughput capacity and average delay in the proposed scheme, which mainly depend on the number of base stations m, the beamwidth of directional antennas θ, and the path loss exponent α. The discussions that how our directional hybrid wireless network explores the transmission range extension of directional antennas and how each parameter influences the throughput and delay are further elaborated. Moreover, our analytic results and experiments demonstrate that the substantial improvements on throughput capacity and the obvious reduction of average delay are achieved in hybrid wireless networks with directional antennas.