MIMO medium access control and routing in ad hoc networks: a holistic perspective

We explore joint design of MIMO medium access control (MAC) and routing in mobile ad hoc networks using spatial diversity. Specifically, building on the MAC design and throughput analysis, we investigate the impact of MIMO MAC on routing. We study the optimal hop distance that minimizes the end-to-end delay in a large network. Our results show that in order to minimize the delay, the gain from spatial diversity should be used for higher data rates and longer hop distance as well.