skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: IEEE 802.11ay based mmWave WLANs: Design Challenges and Solutions
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) with large spectrum available is considered as the most promising frequency band for future wireless communications. The IEEE 802.11ad and IEEE 802.11ay operating on 60 GHz mmWave are the two most expected wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies for ultra-high-speed communications. For the IEEE 802.11ay standard still under development, there are plenty of proposals from companies and researchers who are involved with the IEEE 802.11ay task group. In this survey, we conduct a comprehensive review on the medium access control layer (MAC) related issues for the IEEE 802.11ay, some cross-layer between physical layer (PHY) and MAC technologies are also included. We start with MAC related technologies in the IEEE 802.11ad and discuss design challenges on mmWave communications, leading to some MAC related technologies for the IEEE 802.11ay. We then elaborate on important design issues for IEEE 802.11ay. Specifically, we review the channel bonding and aggregation for the IEEE 802.11ay, and point out the major differences between the two technologies. Then, we describe channel access and channel allocation in the IEEE 802.11ay, including spatial sharing and interference mitigation technologies. After that, we present an in-depth survey on beamforming training (BFT), beam tracking, single-user multiple-input-multiple-output (SU-MIMO) beamforming and multi-user multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) beamforming. Finally, we discuss some open design issues and future research directions for mmWave WLANs. We hope that this paper provides a good introduction to this exciting research area for future wireless systems.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1717736 1409797 1343356
PAR ID:
10072690
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
ISSN:
1553-877X
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 1
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Joint communications and sensing (JCAS) is envisioned as a key feature in future wireless communications networks. In massive MIMO-JCAS systems, the very large number of antennas causes excessively high computational complexity in beamforming designs. In this work, we investigate a low-complexity massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO)-JCAS system employing the maximum-ratio transmission (MRT) scheme for both communications and sensing. We first derive closed-form expressions for the achievable communications rate and Cram´er–Rao bound (CRB) as functions of the large-scale fading channel coefficients. Then, we develop a power allocation strategy based on successive convex approximation to maximize the communications sum rate while guaranteeing the CRB constraint and transmit power budget. Our analysis shows that the introduction of sensing functionality increases the beamforming uncertainty and inter-user interference on the communications side. However, these factors can be mitigated by deploying a very large number of antennas. The numerical results verify our findings and demonstrate the power allocation efficiency. 
    more » « less
  2. null (Ed.)
    To address the needs of emerging bandwidth-intensive applications in 5G and beyond era, the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band with very large spectrum availability have been recognized as a promising choice for future wireless communications. In particular, IEEE 802.11ad/ay operating on 60 GHz carrier frequency is a highly anticipated wireless local area network (WLAN) technology for supporting ultra-high-rate data transmissions. In this paper, we describe additions to the ns-3 802.11ad simulator that include 3D obstacle specifications, line-of-sight calculations, and a sparse cluster-based channel model, which allow researchers to study complex mmWave Wi-Fi network deployments under more realistic conditions. We also study the performance accuracy and simulation efficiency of the implemented statistical channel model as compared to a deterministic ray-tracing based channel model. Through extensive ns-3 simulations, the results show that the implemented channel model has the potential to achieve good accuracy in performance evaluation while improving simulation efficiency. We also provide a detailed parametric analysis on the statistical channel model, which yields insight on how to properly tune the model parameters to further improve performance accuracy. 
    more » « less
  3. The extremely high data rates provided by communications in the millimeter-length (mmWave) frequency bands can help address the unprecedented demands of next-generation wireless communications. However, atmospheric attenuation and high propagation loss severely limit the coverage of mmWave networks. To overcome these challenges, multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) provides beamforming capabilities and high-gain steer- able antennas to expand communication coverage at mmWave frequencies. The main contribution of this paper is the per- formance evaluation of mmWave communications on top of the recently released NR standard for 5G cellular networks. Furthermore, we compare the performance of NR with the 4G long-term evolution (LTE) standard on a highly realistic campus environment. We consider physical layer constraints such as transmit power, ambient noise, receiver noise figure, and practical antenna gain in both cases, and examine bitrate and area coverage as the criteria to benchmark the performance. We also show the impact of MIMO technology to improve the performance of the 5G NR cellular network. Our evaluation demonstrates that 5G NR provides on average 6.7 times bitrate improvement without remarkable coverage degradation. 
    more » « less
  4. Beam management is a strategy to unify beamforming and channel state information (CSI) acquisition with large antenna arrays in 5G. Codebooks serve multiple uses in beam management including beamforming reference signals, CSI reporting, and analog beam training. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a machine learning-refined codebook design process for extremely large multiple-input multiple- output (X-MIMO) systems. We propose a neural network and beam selection strategy to design the initial access and refinement codebooks using end-to-end learning from beamspace representations. The algorithm, called Extreme-Beam Management (X-BM), can significantly improve the performance of extremely large arrays as envisioned for 6G and capture realistic wireless and physical layer aspects. Our results show an 8dB improvement in initial access and overall effective spectral efficiency improvements compared to traditional codebook methods. 
    more » « less
  5. The large spectrum available in the millimeter- Wave (mmWave) band has emerged as a promising solution for meeting the huge capacity requirements of the 5th generation (5G) wireless networks. However, to fully harness the potential of mmWave communications, obstacles such as severe path loss, channel sparsity and hardware complexity should be overcome. In this paper, we introduce a generalized reconfigurable antenna multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architecture that takes advantage of lens-based reconfigurable antennas. The considered antennas can support multiple radiation patterns simultaneously by using a single RF chain. The degrees of freedom provided by the reconfigurable antennas are used to, first, combat channel sparsity in MIMO mmWave systems. Further, to suppress high path loss and shadowing at mmWave frequencies, we use a rate- one space-time block code. Our analysis and simulations show that the proposed reconfigurable MIMO architecture achieves full-diversity gain by using linear receivers and without requiring channel state information at the transmitter. Moreover, simulations show that the proposed architecture outperforms traditional MIMO transmission schemes in mmWave channel settings. 
    more » « less