This paper investigates the performance of a fixed Wireless LAN in
which nodes are equipped with fully adaptive smart antennas. The
considered smart antenna system is a uniform circular array of
microstrip patch elements in which the weights are updated using
the unconstrained LMS algorithm. The behavior of a new directional
MAC protocol for spatial multiplexing is analyzed and compared
with IEEE 802.11 DCF. The paper purpose is the evaluation of
interference and multipath effects on SDMA, using realistic models
for the channel and for the smart antenna system. The link model
takes into account path loss, cochannel interference and
multipath, using a modified Jakes model. Results show that the
performance of the WLAN are strictly dependent on the interferer
characteristics and on the angular spread of the channel.
