A Fast Link Initialization Protocol for Beam-Steering based Cellular Backhaul Systems

Abstract

<p>To deal with the enormous increase of mobile data traffic, new cellular network topologies are necessary. The reduction of cell area and the usage of light-weighted base stations serving only a handful of users, commonly known as the small cell approach, seems to be a suitable solution addressing changes in user expectations and usage scenarios. This paper is an extended version of [1], where current challenges of small cell deployments were presented from a backhaul perspective. A mesh-type backhaul network topology based on beam-steering millimeter-wave systems was proposed as a future-proof solution. In this paper, we focus on a link initialization protocol for beam-steering with highly directive antennas. Special requirements and problems for link setup are analyzed. Based on that, a fast protocol for link initialization is presented and it is evaluated in terms of the resulting initialization speed-up compared to state-of-the-art solutions. Furthermore, a potential approach for extending the fast link initialization protocol to support point-to-multipoint connections is given.</p>