Design aspects of short-range millimeter-wave networks: A MAC layer perspective

Abstract

M illimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless communications is one of the most promising candidates to support extremely high data rates in future wireless networks [1][2][3]. MmWave communications are attractive for many applications such as ultra short-range communications, augmented reality, data centers, vehicular networks, mobile offloading, mobile fronthauling, and in-band backhauling. Due to their great commercial potential, several international activities have emerged to standardize mmWave communications in wireless personal and local area networks (WPANs and WLANs). Examples include IEEE 802.15.3c, ECMA 387 [1], IEEE 802.11ad [3], WirelessHD, WiGig, and recently the IEEE 802.11ay study group on next generation 60 GHz. 1Special propagation features and hardware constraints of mmWave systems introduce many new challenges in the design of efficient physical, medium access control (MAC), and routing layers.The severe channel attenuation, vulnerability to obstacles, directionality of mmWave communications, reduced interference footprint, and potentially high signaling overhead demand a thorough reconsideration of traditional protocol design principles, especially at the MAC layer.In this article, we focus on short-range mmWave networks. Compared to [1-3], which survey either the existing standards or the research literature, we deliver original contributions based on the features specific to mmWave networks that have mostly been ignored in the design of the existing mmWave standards. To distinguish this article from [4] that discusses MAC layer design for mmWave cellular networks, we should notice the following important differences, which are more relevant to our studies, between short range and cellular networks:• Short-range networks may rely on carrier sensing among terminals. • They may use multihop communications, which may also affect traffic patterns. In this article, we show that, contrary to mainstream belief, a mmWave network may exhibit both noise-limited and interference-limited regimes. We highlight the significant mismatch between transmission rates of control and data messages that may degrade the performance and limit the range of use cases that can be supported in future mmWave networks. We also raise the prolonged backoff time problem and discuss the beam training overhead and its consequences such as the alignment-throughput trade-off. To address these new problems, we discuss the necessity of new collision-aware hybrid resource allocation protocols that facilitate concurrent transmissions with quality of service (QoS) guarantees, and also the need for a more efficient retransmission policy. We argue the benefits of a hybrid reactive/proactive control plane to minimize the signaling overhead and propose, for this purpose, a new MAC layer message, which is also able to alleviate the prolonged backoff time. Finally, we discuss the potential of multihop communication techniques to compensate for the error-prone mmWave physical layer, provide reliable mmWave connections, and extend mmWave communication...

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