“Evolution of Theory: Bringing Theory and Technology into Application”

May 2-5, 2010 Telus Convention Center & Marriot Hotel Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The use of smart beamforming antennas in wireless ad hoc networks has recently received increasing attention in the networking community due to their potential benefits and numerous advantages over the traditional omni-directional antennas. Beamforming antennas have the ability to increase the spatial reuse, reduce the interference, improve the transmission reliability, extend the transmission range and/or save the power consumption. If they are effectively used, they can significantly improve the network capacity, lifetime, connectivity and security; which make them important technology for future wireless networks. However, their use in multi-hop wireless networks introduces unprecedented challenges, such as deafness and directional hidden terminals, which need to be carefully addressed at the upper layers in order to exploit the offered potential. This half-day tutorial will provide a comprehensive overview of the design and implementation issues of the antenna-aware network protocols mainly at the medium access and networking layers. We will address the benefits as well as the challenges of using beamforming antennas in multi-hop wireless networks. The tutorial will present the state-of-the-art solutions in directional MAC and directional routing protocols that are designed to harness the potential benefits of beamforming antennas. Where important, performance results will be presented. Theoretical capacity bounds and some practical aspects will also be discussed. We will conclude the talk by highlighting open research work.

Sponsored by IEEE Canada and the IEEE Southern Alberta Section
by the