Influence of directional antennas in STDMA ad hoc network schedule creation

The Spatial reuse Time Division Multiple Access (STDMA) ad hoc networks take advantage of the electromagnetic spectrum reuse to increase the global capacity of the network. The schedule creation takes into account different variables. One of them, the Signal-Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) generates that the geographical distribution of nodes influences a lot the behavior of the network. The usage of directional antennas in this kind of networks improves the spatial reuse and consequently the capacity of the network. In this article the schedule in a STDMA network is analyzed using antennas with different lobe angles. The created frame lengths for different connectivities are analyzed as well as the number of links/nodes per slot or the spatial reuse that it is achieved comparing to the one in a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) network. Results are presented for link-based and node-based assignment methods.