Optimizing Geographic Routing for millimeter-wave wireless networks with directional antenna

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication technologies can achieve up to several gigabit/sec data rate over a small range, using directional antenna. To enable high data rate wireless connectivity in a large area, a multi-hop routing protocol is needed. The rate-adaptiveness of mmWave link and the use of directional antenna brings both challenges and opportunities for routing protocol design. In this paper, we propose an Optimal Geographic Routing Protocol (OGRP) and an accompanying distributed directional medium access control (MAC) protocol. We further study how to optimize the selection of relays to maximize the flow throughput and minimize the network resources used by a flow, considering the MAC overheads. By balancing the number of hops and the per hop throughput, the proposed OGRP outperforms the existing greedy geographic routing and opportunistic routing protocols.