ABSTRACT
Several MAC protocols with directional antennas have been proposed in the context of ad hoc networks in order to improve media utilization with increased number of simultaneous communications. However, even if we have an efficient directional MAC protocol, it alone would not be able to guarantee good system performance, unless we have a proper routing strategy in place that exploits the advantages of a directional antenna. In this chapter, we propose a notion of zonedisjoint routes and define maximally zone disjointness as route selection criteria. Subsequently, an adaptive routing strategy is proposed that exploits the advantages of directional antennas in ad hoc networks through the selection of maximally zone disjoint routes. Zone-disjoint routes would minimize the effect of route coupling in wireless media by selecting routes in such a manner that data communication over one route will minimally interfere with data communication over the others. The proposed routing strategy ensures effective load balancing in wireless media and is applied to design and implement both singlepath and multipath routing protocols on ad hoc networks with directional antennas.
