POWER-CONTROLLED CHANNEL ACCESS AND ROUTING PROTOCOLS FOR MIMO-CAPABLE WIRELESS NETWORKS

Abstract

Transmission power control (TPC) has been used in wireless networks to improve channel reuse and/or reduce energy consumption. It has been mainly applied to single-input single-output (SISO) systems. Significant improvement in performancecan be achieved by employing multi-input multi-output (MIMO) techniques. In this dissertation, we propose adaptive medium-access control (MAC) protocols for power-controlled MIMO-capable wireless networks. In these protocols, we adapt the number of transmit/receive antennas, along with the transmission powers/rates, for the purpose of minimizing total energy consumption and/or maximizing network throughput. Our first protocol, called E-BASIC, exploits the diversity gain of MIMO by adapting the transmission mode, transmission power, and modulation order so as to minimize the total energy consumption. We incorporate E-BASIC in the design of an energy-efficient routing (EER) scheme that selects the least-energy end-to-end path. We then propose two MAC protocols that exploit the multiplexing gain of MIMO, and consider their integration into legacy systems. We alsopropose a combined energy/throughput MAC protocol, called CMAC, which dynamically switches between diversity and multiplexing modes so as to maximize a utility function that depends on both energy consumption and throughput. Finally, we consider employing "virtual" MIMO capability into single-antenna wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We propose a distributed MIMO-adaptive energy-efficient clustering/routing protocol, coined CMIMO, which aims at reducing energy consumption in multi-hop WSNs. In CMIMO, each cluster has up to two cluster heads (CHs), which are responsible for routing traffic between clusters. Simulation results indicate that our proposed protocols achieve significant energy/throughput improvement compared with non-adaptive protocols.