The receiver blocking problem in a DS mobile ad hoc network with directional antennas

In this paper we examine the effect of the receiver blocking problem on the performance of a direct-sequence ad hoc network in which a subset of the nodes employ multiple directional antennas. We present a packet transmission scheduling algorithm and a media access control (MAC) protocol that are designed to exploit the capabilities of the nodes with multiple directional antennas. It is shown that the presence of directional antennas in the network increases the network's vulnerability to the receiver blocking problem with a correspondingly severe impact on network performance. We examine the reason for this phenomenon, and we present a modified MAC protocol that mitigates the problem.