Continuous Neighbor Discovery Protocol in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with Sectored-Antennas

Integration of sectored-antenna in wireless networks improves network performance through increased network capacity, extended transmission range and reduced energy consumption. However, incorporating sectored-antenna makes the trivial process of discovering neighbors even more challenging and complicated. Moreover, due to the frequent changes in network topology, a continuous and self-adaptive neighbor discovery protocol is highly sought-after. In this paper we present a novel neighbor discovery protocol for wireless ad hoc networks with sectored-antennas. The novelty of the proposed protocol lies in three aspects. Firstly, it considers the neighbor discover as an ongoing or continuous process instead of a onetime network bootstrap activity. Secondly, the protocol leverages the in-network information to adapt itself according to the network dynamics. Finally, by adjusting the frequency and length of the neighbor discovery process, the protocol reduces the discovery time and the communication overhead. Through extensive simulation-based study it is shown that the proposed protocol outperformed the pure random, scan-based approach in terms of discovery latency while significantly minimizing the communication overhead.