A REVIEW OF MAC SOLUTIONS IN DIRECTIONAL COMMUNICATION ENABLED MANETS

Applications of ad hoc networks based on present 3G/4G and future 5G standards that demand for higher throughput, lower latency and service awareness become technically feasible when implemented with the improved antenna technology. Several recently proposed media access protocols for ad hoc networks advocate the use of directional antenna over the traditional omni-directional antenna for better performance. The medium access policy of the advanced antenna enabled ad hoc networks aims for effective channel utilization by eliminating challenges of beamforming nature of antenna. These protocols that employ directional communication approach based medium access methods decreases the total number of packet collisions during secure data transmission. This paper reviews the recently proposed medium access protocols to investigate medium access strategy used to address specifically the directional hidden terminal problems. The analysis of the methods adopted and underlying key ideas of the medium access protocols help researchers to understand, design and reveal the progress made in developing effective channel access protocols for directional communication enabled ad hoc networks.