Connectivity Of Large-Scale Wireless Networks With Directional Antennas

In multi-hop wireless networks, per-hop forwarding strategies that optimize local transmissions can have a subtle impact on network performance. Motivated by a number of scenarios for improving signal strength or mitigating interference, we study a fundamental problem that arises in a wireless ad hoc network with directional antennas, where nodes are randomly placed with their transmission footprints (each as a sector) aligned toward the destinations. Only the nodes located in the transmission footprint of a transmitter act as forwarders. Our study addresses the connectivity of this setting. We observe that there is a critical spread angle, above which there is little impact on these properties. Analytically, we derive upper and lower bounds for the critical spread angle.