Multi-Hop Communication System with Multi-Antenna Beamforming in IRDT Protocol

This paper proposes a multi-hop communications system that utilizes digital beamforming to efficiently collect data packets from sensor nodes (SNs) via the intermittent receiver-driven data transmission (IRDT) protocol. By leveraging beamforming, this system enables more SNs to directly communicate with a concentrator, increasing the number of idle SNs in the network available as potential receivers and thus preventing the data packet convergence on specific SNs. Furthermore, the resulting non-concentrated distribution of data packets allows beamforming to effectively limit the number of SNs with data packets, significantly reducing the probability of packet collisions. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed system significantly improves the packet delivery ratio.