Intelligent Beam Configuration for Neighbor Discovery in Ad Hoc Networks with Directional Antennas

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology pp. 1 - 17
• Main Authors: Wang, Jian, Feng, Gang, Qin, Shuang, Liu, Yi-jing, Zhou, Jianhong, Peng, Youkun, Wang, Yatong, Zhang, Long
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.08.2024
• Subjects: Ad hoc networks; beam configuration; Data models; Directional antennas; Federated learning; Heuristic algorithms; mobile Ad Hoc Networks; Neighbor discovery; personalized federated learning; Stochastic processes; Training
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2024.3437425

High frequency directional communication is considered as key technology to improve the performance of mobile Ad Hoc networks owing to its advantages in terms of communication distance and low interference. Neighbor discovery plays a key role for efficient routing and topology control in mobile Ad Hoc networks. It is also a very challenging issue due to the use of directional antennas and the movement of mobile nodes. Beam configuration is the core step of neighbor discovery in mobile Ad Hoc networks with directional antennas. Therefore, it is imperative to develop an efficient beam configuration algorithm to reduce the neighbor discovery latency. In this paper, we propose a novel beam configuration algorithm based on personalized federated learning. Considering the characteristics of mobile Ad Hoc networks (e.g., dynamic topology and directional communication), we use Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) as the local model of federated learning. Since the local data of Ad Hoc network nodes is heterogeneous, Model Agnostic Meta Learning (MAML) is applied to personalize the federated learning. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm has better performance than some baseline algorithms