Future wireless networks need to support the increasing demands for high data rates and improved coverage. One promising solution is sectorization, where an infrastructure node (e.g., a base station) is equipped with multiple sectors employing directional communication. Although the concept of sectorization is not new, it is critical to fully understand the potential of sectorized networks, such as the rate gain achieved when multiple sectors can be simultaneously activated. In this paper, we focus on sectorized wireless networks, where sectorized infrastructure nodes with beam-steering capabilities form a multi-hop mesh network for data forwarding and routing. We present a sectorized node model and characterize the capacity region of these sectorized networks. We define the flow extension ratio and the corresponding sectorization gain, which quantitatively measure the performance gain introduced by node sectorization as a function of the network flow. Our objective is to find the optimal sectorization of each node that achieves the maximum flow extension ratio, and thus the sectorization gain. Towards this goal, we formulate the corresponding optimization problem and develop an efficient distributed algorithm that obtains the node sectorization under a given network flow with an approximation ratio of 2/3. Through extensive simulations, we evaluate the sectorization gain and the performance of the proposed algorithm in various network scenarios with varying network flows. The simulation results show that the approximate sectorization gain increases sublinearly as a function of the number of sectors per node.

翻译：未来无线网络需支撑日益增长的高数据速率与更优覆盖需求。扇区化是一种有前景的解决方案，即基础设施节点（如基站）配备多个采用定向通信的扇区。尽管扇区化概念并非新颖，但充分理解扇区化网络的潜力（例如多扇区同时激活时的速率增益）至关重要。本文聚焦于扇区化无线网络，其中具备波束赋形能力的扇区化基础设施节点构成用于数据转发与路由的多跳网状网络。我们提出扇区化节点模型，并刻画此类扇区化网络的容量域。定义流扩展比率及相应的扇区化增益，该指标定量衡量节点扇区化作为网络流函数所引入的性能增益。我们的目标是为每个节点找到实现最大流扩展比率（即扇区化增益）的最优扇区化方案。为此，我们建立相应的优化问题，并开发一种高效的分布式算法，在给定网络流下以2/3的近似比获得节点扇区化配置。通过大量仿真，我们评估了不同网络场景与变化网络流下的扇区化增益及所提算法性能。仿真结果表明，近似扇区化增益随每节点扇区数量呈次线性增长。