6th IEEE International Workshop on Performance and Management of Wireless and Mobile Networks
On Improving the Performance of IEEE 802.11s
based Wireless Mesh Networks Using Directional
Antenna
Jalel Ben-Othman Lynda Mokdad
Laboratoire CNRS-Prism Laboratoire LACL
University of Versailles University of Paris 12
jbo@prism.uvsq.fr Lynda.mokdad@univ-paris12.fr
Abstract—The most widely used standard for wireless net-
works is the IEEE 802.11. In 802.11, dense deployment of
Access Points (APs) is needed to meet customers’ demands.
The installation of multiple access points is expensive and not
convenient because of Ethernet wiring from access points to
backhaul network access modem, hub, etc. Wireless mesh
network (WMN) is an emerging technology; presented mainly
as the solution to the problem related to the necessity to create a
wireless distribution system (APs need to interconnect wirelessly).
It is expected to replace the wireline infrastructure network
due to the scalability and rapid cost effective deployment and
maintenance. One of the WMN applications is that they can be
used as a backbone. The characteristics of self-organization and
auto-configuration in the wireless mesh backbone offer many
benefits such as low upfront investment, increased reliability
and scalability. In this Paper, we are interested, to the using
of directional antennas in wireless mesh backbone. By using
this kind of antenna in wireless mesh backbone we can improve
the performance and QoS. The directional antenna allow to
improve the spatial reuse of the wireless channel, which allows
nodes to communicate simultaneously without interference, and
potentially establish links between nodes far away from each
other, and the number of routing hops can be fewer than that
of omnidirectional antennas. We also propose a new amendment
to reduce the routing overhead related to the use of multiple
interfaces.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless Networks is primarily an alternative to wired
networks, widely used in recent year due to the scalability
of the wireless technology, the simplicity of implementation
and the robustness. Wireless mesh network (WMN) allows
communication hop by hop within the infrastructure. In such a
network the Mesh Point (MP) nodes communicate wirelessly
through a multihop routing protocol. In this paper, we are
interested to study the impact of using directional antenna in an
IEEE 802.11s based network. We want to take the advantage
of directional antennas while keeping the compatibility of the
IEEE 802.11 standard. The rest of this paper is organized as
flowing: after a brief overview of the IEEE 802.11s Mesh
Networks and HWMP, we present the related work in the
section III, then we present our proposal in section IV. In this
This work is financially supported by the DGE-PUMA project. PRiSM
laboratory, University of Versailles, France.
978-1-4244-8389-1/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 785
P2MNET 2010, Denver, Colorado
Mohamed Ould Cheikh
Laboratoire LAMSADE
University of Paris-dauphine
ouldcheikh@lamsade.dauphine.fr
section we start by describing the mechanism to be used to
reduce the routing overhead, we present the directional antenna
model and their implementation in NS3 simulator, then we
discuss the influence of the coverage angle size of each sector
on the network performance. Finally we summarize the main
contribution of this paper, and we give the future work of this
study in section VI.
II. OVERVIEW: IEEE 802.11 S M ESH N ETWORKS
IEEE 802.11s is an amendment draft of IEEE 802.11
for mesh networking, defining how wireless devices can
interconnect to create a WLAN mesh network. It extends
the IEEE 802.11 MAC standard by defining new wireless
configuration that manage the topology, the quality of radio
link and the routing protocols to increase the effective coverage
area. In this draft, the Distribution System (DS) of an AP can
be replaced with wireless links or multi-hop paths between
multiple APs.
In IEEE 802.11s, the network nodes are divided into two
classes: The nodes that support mesh services and those who
do not support.
• Mesh points (MPs): Are entities that support mesh
services (such as path selection and forwarding ...etc),
(i.e. they participate in the formation and operation of
the mesh network).
• Mesh Access Point: The configuration of an MP that is
collocated with an Access Point is referred to as a Mesh
Access Point (MAP).
• Mesh portals (MPPs): Interface the network to other
IEEE 802 LAN segments.
• Stations : do not participate in mesh functionalities.
IEEE 802.11s extends only the IEEE 802.11 MAC. It tries to
reuse as much as possible the different mechanisms defined in
other 802.11 standards, such an IEEE 802.11i for the security,
802.11e for QoS, etc. In addition to the access methods
already existing (DCF, PCF, EDCA,....), it also defines an
optional access method, Mesh Deterministic Access (MDA),
that allows supporting MPs that support MDA to access the
channel at selected times with lower contention than would
otherwise be possible. MP nodes can either use single channel
or multiple channels.
To discover neighboring MPs, an MP performs passive
scanning (via periodic beacons) or active scanning (via probe
messages). If no neighboring MPs are found, the MP can
establish itself as the initiator of a mesh network by adopting
a Mesh ID from one of its profiles, selecting a channel for
operation, selecting a channel precedence value. An MP shall
support at least one profile. A profile consists of:
• Mesh ID
• A path selection protocol identifier
• A path selection metric identifier
The received beacon or probe response frame contains
mesh related information such a Mesh ID, a path selection
protocol identifier and metric identifier. These information
must matching the MPs active profile or matching at least
one of the MPs profiles if the MP is not currently a member
of a mesh. A discovered MP will become a peer MP after
peering processes by 4-way handshaking (2-way handshaking
with peering-open-frame/peering-confirm-frame exchange in
each direction).
For the routing, this Draft define a mandatory path selection
protocol (Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol: HWMP) and a
metric (AirTime) [1] [2] [3]. In a particular mesh only one
protocol/metric will be active on a particular link at a time. To
ensure interoperability, 802.11s define, a default path selection
protocol (HWMP: see next section). IEEE 802.11s defines
also a default link metric (AireTime) that may be used by
a path selection protocol to identify an efficient radio-aware
path. This metric reflects the amount of channel resources
consumed by transmitting the frame over a particular link. It is
an approximate, and designed for ease of implementation and
interoperability. The airtime cost for each link is calculated
as:
1 • An MP hearing a proactive PREQ creates or updates its
Ca = [Oca + Op + r ] 1−ef
Bt
Where Oca , Op and Bt are constants, and the input parameters
r and ef are the bit rate in Mb/s and the frame error rate for
the test frame size Bt respectively.
Parameter 802.11a 802.11b Description
Oca 75μs 355μs Channel access overhead
Op 110μs 364μs Protocol overhead
Bt 8224 8224 Number of bits in test frame
A. Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol
The Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol (HWMP) is a
mesh path selection protocol that combines the flexibility
of on-demand path selection with proactive topology tree
extensions[1]. This protocol uses a common set of protocol
primitives, generation and processing rules mainly inspired by
the work of the IETF MANET group. As a hybrid protocol,
HWMP [1] supports two modes of operation depending on the
configuration:
• On demand mode: this mode allows MPs to communicate
using peer-to-peer paths.
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• Proactive tree building mode: proactive topology tree
extension.
1) On demand mode: In this mode, if a source MP needs
to find a path to a destination MP:
• It broadcasts PREQ (Path REQuest) with the destination
and metric initialized to 0.
• Upon receiving PREQ, MPs update the path to source if
the sequence number is greater or the same as the current
path and offers a better metric.
• If a new path is created or the existing one is modified,
PREQ is forwarded further.
• PREQ provides ”Destination Only” (DO) and ”Reply and
Forward” (RF) flags to indicate to the intermediate MP
who know the route to the destination, they can respond
to this request by sending PREP (Path REPly).
– If DO=1, only the destination MP can generate a
PREP after selecting best path.
– If DO=0 and RF =0, intermediate MP already has a
valid path to the destination sends a unicast PREP
to the source and does not forward PREQ.
– If DO=0 and RF =1: The first intermediate node
already has a valid path to the destination sends a
PREP and forwards PREQ setting DO =1 to avoid
other intermediate nodes to send back PREP.
• After creating or updating a path to the source, the
destination MP sends a unicast PREP back to the source.
2) Proactive tree building mode: In this mode a Mesh
Portal Point (MPP) is configured as Root and HWMP sets up
a tree to this Root. This mode can be performed using either
the PREQ or RANN mechanism.
In the proactive PREQ mechanism:
• Root MP periodically broadcasts PREQ with the destina-
tion address set to all ones (broadcast address), the DO
flag set to 1 and the RF flag set to 1.
forwarding information to the root MP, updates the metric
and hop count of the PREQ, records the metric and hop
count to the root MP, and then transmits the updated
PREQ.
• proactive PREQ provides ”Proactive PREP” bit:
– If ”Proactive PREP” bit set to 0, MP may send
a gratuitous PREP if required for example, if the
MP has data to send to the root MP and requires
establishing a bidirectional path with the root MP).
The gratuitous PREP establishes the path from the
root MP to the MP
– If ”Proactive PREP” bit set to 1, MP shall send a
gratuitous PREP.
In the proactive RANN mechanism:
• Root MP periodically broadcasts RANN,
• Upon reception of a RANN, each MP has to create or
refresh a path to the root through sending a unicast PREQ
to the root MP.
• The unicast PREQ follows the same processing rules
defined in the on demand mode.
 III. R ELATED W ORK
Directionnal Antennas (DA) has received increasing interest
in recent years, especially in the context of an ad hoc network,
due to their better performance. By using DA in IEEE
802.11s backbone, the nodes can communicate simultaneously
without interference, and potentially establish links between
nodes far away from each other, and with reduced number
of routing hops. However, the existing IEEE 802.11 (mesh)
standards does not gain with the implementation of DA and
poses additional technical challenges such as deafness and
hidden- and exposed terminal problems arisen due to direc-
tional transmissions[5]. Deafness is caused when a node, C,
attempts to initiate dialog with a node, A, while A is engaged
in communication with another node [6].
Figure 1. A scenario illustrating the problem of deafness [6].
Most work on directional antennas proposes to change the
MAC layer, to take advantage of these benefits and to solve
the deafness and hidden- and exposed terminal problems. In
DMAC (Directionnal MAC) [7] all frames are transmitted
directionally except for the CTS (Clear To Send). In MMAC
(Multi-hop RTS MAC) [7], the authors propose the multi-hop
RTS (Request To Send) to take advantage of the higher gain
obtained by directional antennas. [6] purposes ToneDMAC
to resolve the problem of deafness. However, most of these
works are not compatible with the 802.11 standard.
In this paper, we want to take the advantage of directional
antennas (such as decreasing interference, etc) while keeping
the compatibility of the IEEE 802.11 STANDARD.
IV. O UR PROPOSAL
In our proposal, we use a sector antenna, which consists
of multiple fixed beam antennas aimed in different directions,
each covering a different sector of space, all of them together
giving full 2π coverage. A fixed beam antenna is the tra-
ditional directional antenna which is pre-fixed in particular
direction (has a fixed gain profile with a primary lobe pointing
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in a single direction). Steering the beam is only possible by
physically changing the orientation of the antenna[10]. Using
this configuration allows to solve the deafness problem.
The main purpose of our proposal is to take the advantage
of directional antennas while keeping the compatibility of the
IEEE 802.11 MAC and to reduce the routing overhead. In the
flowing we describe the mechanism that we propose to reduce
the routing overhead, and then we present the directional
antenna model and their implementation in NS3 simulator that
we use for the simulation.
A. Sector-HWMP
The mechanism that will define in the following is valid for
the two modes (Proactive tree building mode and On demand
mode). In this mechanism, if a source MP A needs to find a
path to a destination MP B:
• if node A know the position of node B, the PREQ is
transmitted only by the fixed beam antenna that covers
the MP B (MP B must is inside of the three-dimensional
radiation beam of this antenna).
• Otherwise, the PREQ is broadcasted by all beam anten-
nas.
In our proposal, each node has a table where it keeps the
list of the positions of others nodes. The PREQ and PREP
messages format are modified to carry the sender position.
Before an MP sends PREQ or reply with PREP, it put its
position.
When an MP receives a PREQ or PREP, it updates its
position’s table by adding the new entries (new positions if
exists).
The PREQ element is used for discovering a path to one
or more destinations. Whenever an MP has to send or have
to forward a PREQ to a set of destinations, it checks if there
exists an entry in the position’s table for each destination.
The PREQ which will be sent by the interface i must contain
only the subset of destinations addresses of the MPs that
are inside of the three-dimensional radiation beam of this
interface. In this way, we can reduce the overhead: Some
interfaces may have an empty subset of destinations addresses
(No PREQ have to send on these interfaces or the size of
PREQ is reduced) and the numbers of intermediates MP are
reduced. To determines if a destination MP is inside of the
three-dimensional radiation beam of the interface i, the MP
uses the algorithm1 (see below). The subset of destinations
addresses that not exist in position’s table of the MP (Sender,
intermediate) will be set in each PREQ broadcasted (see figure
2).
When three consecutive attempts fail at path discovery to-
wards a given (set of) destination(s), this subset of destinations
addresses will be set in each PREQ broadcasted.
In figure 2, we assume that the source MP has three fixed
beam antennas aimed in different directions, each covering an
angle of 120 degree. In this figure, if a source MP knows the
position of the destination MP, then the destination address
of this MP will be set only in the PREQ copy that must be

Figure 2. Figure illustrating Sector-HWMP.
transmitted by the antenna 1. Otherwise, this address must be
added in all PREQ broadcasted by 1, 2 and 3.
B. Directional antenna model
A directional antenna is one ”having the property of radi-
ating or receiving electromagnetic waves more effectively in
some directions than in others” [3]. In practice, when one
wants to describe how a particular antenna works, some basic
characteristics common to all types of antennas, are given:
Impedance, radiation pattern, polarization and gain.
In wireless network simulations we are interested only to
determine when and with what reception power a signal arrives
at a receiver. The signal strength is used to determine whether
the frame is transmitted successfully or not. There are several
propagation models to predict the signal power received by
the receiver (Free Space, Two Ray Ground, Shadowing, etc).
Free Space model is used to simulate path loss of wireless
communication when line-of-sight path exists between trans-
mitter and receiver. Two Ray Ground model is used when
line-of-sight path exists and reflection of ground is considered.
Shadowing model simulates shadow effect of obstructions
between the transmitter and receiver.
For example, the free-space attenuation can be computed
using Friis modernized equation:
PT x ∗GRx ∗GT x ∗λ2
PRx = (4∗π∗d)2 ∗L
where :
• PRx , PT x are reception and transmission power in watt;
• GRx , GT x are reception and transmission gain;
• L is a general dimensionless system loss coefficient;
• λ is the wavelength;
• and d is the distance in meters between sender and
receiver.
Most of the current implementations of the 802.11 physical
models (802.11a/b/g...etc.) in a packet-based network simula-
tors uses only omni-directional antennas models ( GRx = 1
and GT x = 1). These implementations use an object
(wifichannel in NS3, WirelessChannel in NS2) to model the
radio signal transmission. This object keeps a list of all nodes
or the list of their physical components on this channel (All
the nodes participate in the simulation). It works just like a
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physical media, receives packets from nodes and assigns them
to all possible destinations and following the reception power,
the receiving node decides whether the packet is received
correctly or not.
In the directional antennas models, the electromagnetic
waves are mainly radiated in some directions and consequently
the reception and transmission gains are calculated differently.
Also, the received packets by the wifichannel object do not
assigned to all nodes in the simulation but only to the receivers
inside the three-dimensional radiation beam.
The gain of an antenna (in a given direction) is defined as
”the ratio of the intensity, in a given direction, to the radiation
intensity that would be obtained if the power accepted by the
antenna were radiated isotropically (the power accepted (input)
by the antenna divided by 4π)” [4].
Gain = 4π UP(θ,φ)
in
Since all of the accepted (input) power is not radiated
(because of losses), the total radiated power (Prad ) is related
to the total input power (Pin ) by :
Prad = ecd Pin
where ecd , is the radiation efficiency of the antenna.
Gain = ecd [4π UP(θ,φ)
rad
]
The maximum value of the gain can be expressed according
to the beam solid angle :
U (θ, φ) = B0 F (θ, φ)
  2π  π
Prad = ◦Ω U (θ, φ)dΩ = B0 0 0 F (θ, φ) sin θdθdφ
Gainmax = ecd  2π  π 4π
[ F (θ,φ) sin θdθdφ]/F (θ,φ)|max
0 0
Gainmax = ecd Ω4πA
Where ΩA is the beam solid angle.
For our simulations, we consider an antenna formed by a
cone (The beam width of this antenna is 2ϕ and ecd = 1) with
spherical cap model , which is a mathematical approximation
for simplicity. The solid angle :
ΩA = 2π(1 − cos ϕ)
The gain can be expressed as :
4π
GRx = GT x = ecd [ 2π(1−cos ϕ) ]
2
GRx = GT x = [ (1−cos ϕ) ]
To check if a receiver is inside the three-dimensional
radiation beam of the antenna, we use the algorithms defined
in [9]:
− − − − − − − − −Algorithm1 − − − − − − − − − −
• Input parameters
– positionSrc : position of the source MP.
– positionDst : position of the destination MP.
– width : this is the width of the dir-antenna, basically,
the angular range to which it can transfer.
– angle : orientation of the antenna (from the positive
X-axis) (degrees).
 • To determines if a destination MP is inside of the three- V. S IMULATION RESULTS
dimensional radiation beam of the beam antenna i of the In this section we discuss the influence of the coverage
source MP, we use the flowing instructions: angle size of each sector on the network performance. The
performance metrics concerned in this work are mean end-to-
bool isInBeamSolidAngle=false; end delay and the routing overhead. In figure 4, we observe the
general trend that the end-to-end delay improves as the beam-
double distance = GetDistance (positionSrc, width decreases (due to the gain of antenna). In the figure
positionDst); 5, we compare the overhead introduced by Sector-HWMP
if(distance==0.0) and classical HWMP. We notice that our proposal reduces
{ greatly the routing overhead. The importance of our proposal
return true; is clearly seen as there are a number of interfaces greater than
} 4 (for a beam width of 90 degree, the routing overhead is
reduced by 50% and for a 45 degree the routing overhead
double x=positionDst.x-positionSrc.x; is reduced by 70%), which allow to improving the overall
double y=positionDst.y-positionSrc.y; network performance.
double angle = arctg(y,x);
angle = angle*180/M PI;
if(angle < 0) angle += 360;

uint32 t lowerAngle;
uint32 t upperAngle;
lowerAngle = m angle;
while(lowerAngle < 0){
lowerAngle += 360;
}
upperAngle = lowerAngle + m width;
while(upperAngle < 0){
upperAngle += 360;
}
upperAngle %= 360;
lowerAngle %= 360; Figure 4. Mean End-To-End Delay.
if(upperAngle > lowerAngle){
/* Normal case*/
if(angle ≥ lowerAngle && angle ≤ upperAngle)
isInBeamSolidAngle =true;
} else if(upperAngle < lowerAngle){
/* Like lowerAngle = 350 and upper angle =
10 */
if(angle ≥ lowerAngle —— angle ≤
upperAngle) isInBeamSolidAngle = true;
} else{
/* both are equal, = 360 width */
isInBeamSolidAngle = true;
}
return isInBeamSolidAngle;

NB : all antennas have the same z coordinate.

Figure 5. Sector-HWMP Routing Overhead.

− − − − − − −EndAlgorithm − − − − − − − − VI. C ONCLUSION

1) Implementation: The figure 3 shows a UML diagram Recently, the directional antenna has received intensive
illustrating directional antenna implementation. In this figure research due to its variety of potential benefits for wireless
we show only the part of 802.11 models provided in ns-3 that communication systems. It is expected to provide significant
we have changed. improvements such as spatial reuse of the wireless channel,

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 Figure 3. UML diagram illustrating directionnal antenna implementation
which allows nodes to communicate simultaneously without
interference, and potentially establish links between nodes far
away from each other, and the number of routing hops can be
fewer than that of Omni-directional antennas .
IEEE 802.11s is an amendment draft of IEEE 802.11 for
mesh networking. The main goal of this amendment is to
provide the routing functionality between APs in a wireless
distribution system. It defines a mandatory path selection pro-
tocol (Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol: HWMP) and a default
metric (AirTime) to reflects the cost for each Wireless link at
path discovery. This routing protocol is designed to support
multiple interfaces (multiple wireless network devices). In this
case, the PREQ used at the path discovery is broadcasted by
all interfaces. In this paper we propose a new improvement
of HWMP protocol (Sector-HWMP) that take into account the
using of directional antennas. This improvement is intended
to reduce the routing overhead related to the use of multiple
interfaces, and to take the advantage of directional antenna.
In order to evaluate the performance of our proposal, we have
carried-out some simulation experiments in NS-3. Simulation
results show that Sector-HWMP pout performs the classical
HWMP in terms of routing overhead and the mean end-to-
end delay. As a future work, we are intended to consider the
problems of route maintenance (using local routing).
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