An efficient bow-based on-demand QoS routing protocol for MIMO ad hoc networks

The multiple inputs multiple output (MIMO) architecture supports smart antennas and MIMO links is now a popular technique for exploiting the multi-path, spatial multiplexing, and diversity gain to provide high spectral efficiencies and performance improvement in wireless ad hoc networks. In this work, we propose a new multi-path on demand quality-of-service (QoS) routing architecture, looked like a bow and called as bow structure, in MIMO ad hoc networks. A bow-based MIMO ad hoc networks routing protocol, named as BowQR, is also proposed to support QoS requirement and to improve the transmission efficiency. Each bow structure is composed of rate-links and/or range-links on demand to provide multi-path routing and satisfy the bandwidth requirement. Two types of transmission links, the rate-link and range-link, exploit the spatial multiplexing and spatial diversity to provide extremely high spectral efficiencies and increase the transmission range. Finally, the simulation results show that our BowQR protocol achieves the performance improvements in throughput, success rate, and average latency.