Directional antennas improve the link-connectivity of interference limited ad hoc networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates how directional antennas influence the connectivity of interference-limited ad hoc networks, deriving analytical expressions for key metrics and validating findings through simulations.

Contribution

It provides the first closed-form expressions for outage probability, capacity, and node degree considering antenna directivity in interference-limited networks.

Findings

Directional antennas reduce interference effects on links.

More directional transmitters improve network connectivity.

Analytical results are validated by simulations.

Abstract

We study wireless ad hoc networks in the absence of any channel contention or transmit power control and ask how antenna directivity affects network connectivity in the interference limited regime. We answer this question by deriving closed-form expressions for the outage probability, capacity and mean node degree of the network using tools from stochastic geometry. These novel results provide valuable insights for the design of future ad hoc networks. Significantly, our results suggest that the more directional the interfering transmitters are, the less detrimental are the effects of interference to individual links. We validate our analytical results through computer simulations.