Adaptive Antenna Adjustment for 3D Urban Wireless Mesh Networks

Abstract

We describe a new type of wireless mesh nodes called Dyntenna nodes that are equipped with steerable omnidirectional antenna. Designed for 3D wireless mesh networks, these nodes adaptively adjust the antenna orientation to improve the connectivity and the throughput of the system by increasing the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) between nodes. We propose an ef?cient antenna adjustment algorithm that probes less than 10% (on average) of all possible antenna orientations to determine the optimal orientation. We demonstrate the importance of being able to programmatically orient the antenna, by presenting the measurement results from our testbed. Our experimental results show that, compared to using the default vertically upright antenna orientation, Dyntenna nodes can improve the median of the RSSI per link by 5 dB, and the average throughputs for 27% of one-hop paths and for 38% of the multi-hop paths by 59% and 73%, respectively.