Neighbor Discovery for Directional Tranceivers

Problem Statement and Motivation

Directional Radio Frequency (RF) / Free-Space-Optical (FSO) transceivers have the potential to play a significant role in future generation wireless networks. They are advantageous in terms of improved spectrum utilization, higher data transfer rate, and lower probability of interception from unwanted sources. Despite these advantages, communications using directional transceivers require establishment and maintenance of line-of-sight (LOS). Thus, establishment of the communication link or neighbor discovery plays an important role in mobile ad hoc networks with RF/FSO directional transceivers. We consider two nodes (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Quadcopters) hovering in 3D space, each with one directional transceiver mounted on a mechanically steerable spherical structure/head, with which they can scan 360o in the horizontal plane and 360o in the vertical plane. We propose a novel scheme that deals with the problem of automatic discovery and establishment of LOS alignment between these nodes.

People

Prototype

The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated through a prototype, built using off the shelf hardware. The details about the prototype can be found in the paper.

Publications

  1. S. Bhunia, Y. Qian†, and M. R. Khan, “Electronically Steerable Mobile Optical-Wireless Mesh-Network,” in 2024 IEEE International Systems Conference (IEEE SysCon 2024), Montreal, Canada, Apr. 2024.

  2. MR Khan, S Bhunia, M Yuksel, L Kane, “Line-of-Sight Discovery in 3D Using Highly Directional Transceivers”, in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 18, no. 12, pp. 2885-2898, 2019, DOI:10.1109/TMC.2018.2885061.

  3. S Bhunia, M R Khan, M Yuksel, S Sengupta, “In-Band LOS Discovery Using Highly Directional Transceivers”, Ad Hoc Networks, Volume 91, 2019 DOI:10.1016/j.adhoc.2019.101875

  4. S Bhunia, M Khan, S Sengupta and M Yuksel, “LOS Discovery for Highly Directional Full Duplex RF/FSO Transceivers”, to appear in IEEE MILCOM 2016, Baltimore, Maryland.

  5. M Khan, S Bhunia, M Yuksel and S Sengupta, “LOS Discovery in 3D for Highly Directional Transceivers”, to appear in IEEE MILCOM 2016, Baltimore, Maryland.