This paper investigates the performance of a distributed wireless network in which the nodes are equipped with fully adaptive smart antennas. The main goal is the evaluation of the influence that the geometrical configuration of the antenna array has on network throughput and packet delay. Analysis and simulations are performed to study the relationship between the geometry of the antenna array and the network topology. In this paper, the performance degradation due to both the small-channel angular spreads and the speed of mobile nodes is investigated. The results, which hold for the low-rank channel model only, extend to this specific case previous results obtained in ideal channel conditions. The study adopts an access scheme, previously proposed for ad-hoc networks, which is able to exploit the interferer suppression capabilities of smart antennas, together with realistic models for the antenna and the channel behaviors.
