Simulation and Modeling of a Novel Medium Access Control Scheme for Multi-Beam Directional Networking
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze a new medium access control (MAC) protocol for multi-beam directional network via high fidelity simulation using a real-time emulator. Multi-beam directional systems are a novel approach to networking that leverage recent advancements in physical layer technology that allows for the formation of multiple simultaneous beams in both transmit and receive. These multiple beams allows for the removal of burdensome coordination between the transmitter and receiver and allows for an uncoordinated, distributed random access scheme that offers high throughput. Besides theoretical work, this paper is the first to characterize the performance of such systems using real-time simulation tools. Aside from the random access scheme, several novel MAC features are added that allow for robust communication, such as location tracking and tracking neighbors transmit or receive state. For this paper, we implement this protocol in both simulation and a new Extendable Mobile Ad-hoc Network Emulator (EMANE) model that allows for real-time, high fidelity performance evaluation. Using EMANE allows us to better understand the performance of the newly developed protocols by running real-time applications through the network. We show that our EMANE model and simulator coincide with the theoretical network capacity, which allows for numerical characterization of scenarios in which theoretical results have not been derived. Furthermore, through our work, we performance test the EMANE model and quantify the maximum number of nodes that we can operate in real-time. Through this testing, two bottlenecks are identified: 1) infrastructure issues, where the amount of data passed between the servers is too high, and2) computation issues, where calculating the interference on the packets becomes too time consuming.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 03, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1032244
Entities
People
- Brian Proulx
- Gregory Kuperman
- Nathaniel M. Jones
- Thomas Goff
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology