DCSR: Directional CSMA/CA-based MAC Protocol with Spatial Reuse for 60GHz mmWave WLANs

This paper investigates the problem of spatial reuse in directional CSMA/CA-based medium access control (MAC) protocols for 60 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless local area networks (WLANs). A directional CSMA/CA-based MAC protocol with spatial reuse (DCSR) is proposed. The DCSR protocol employs an exhaustive beamforming training mechanism with power measurement capability (eBFPM) for efficient beamforming training and power measurement. Based on the power measurement results and the physical interference model, a centralized CSMA/CA-based medium access mechanism (CCMA) is employed by the DCSR protocol for spatial reuse communications. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DCSR protocol not only fully utilizes spatial reusability but also effectively mitigates deafness and hidden terminal issues. As a result, it achieves significantly higher throughput and lower transmission delay compared to existing directional CSMA/CA-based MAC protocols for 60 GHz mmWave WLANs.