Millimeter-wave Wireless Personal Area Networks Research Articles

Joint relay selection and power control for robust cooperative multicast in mmWave WPANs

We propose an optimization algorithm for joint relay selection and source and relay power allocation under mixed line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS path scenarios for both power saving and robustness enhancement of cooperative multicast in millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks. Our aims are to reduce power consumption and enhance the robustness of cooperative multicasts in millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks. First, we describe a novel beam training protocol that is capable of overhearing and information feedback to filter relay candidates with non-LoS links and avoid selecting relays for transceivers with LoS paths. Second, the joint relay selection and power allocation issue is formulated as an optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the maximum combined power consumption of the source and relay under maximum tolerable outage probabilities and transmit powers. By introducing relaxation and Lagrange multiplier methods, a closed-form expression for the joint relay selection and power allocation is obtained. Finally, simulation results indicate significant improvements in terms of both outage probability and power consumption over the conventional combined transmit power minimization algorithm.

A Millimeter-Wave WPAN Adaptive Phased Array Control Method Using Low-Frequency Part of Signal for Self-Directed System

In this paper, we propose a self-directed adaptive phased array control method using the low-frequency part of the signal for a millimeter-wave wireless personal area network, which can reduce the hardware requirement and power consumption compared with those of the conventional digital beamforming method. The signal from each element antenna of the antenna array is phase shifted and down converted to the baseband and then divided into two paths. The first paths are low-pass filtered to extract the low-frequency part of the signals for beamforming control. The second paths from all antennas are combined in-phase in an analog domain and then sampled by two high-speed A/D converters for demodulation. A beamforming algorithm using the sampled low-frequency part of the signal is also proposed. The beamforming calculation time is established as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio, the bandwidth of the low-frequency part, and the required phase control accuracy. The calculated values match the measured results. Using the IEEE 802.15.3c specifications with an eight-element array antenna, the calculation time is less than ${\hbox{5}}~\mu{\hbox{s}}$ for initial beam establishment and less than ${\hbox{30}}~\mu{\hbox{s}}$ for beam tracking. Therefore, high-speed beamforming is possible while reducing the power consumption.

Multi-hop communications in directional CSMA/CA over mmWave WPANs

In this paper, we consider the multi-hop communications in contention period of medium access control protocol over millimeter-wave band. A relaying devices selection policy and a grouping algorithm are proposed, and the directional carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance protocol in the immediate acknowledgement mode for IEEE 802.15.3c is considered under saturation environments. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of using directional antennas and relaying devices in contention period. A sensing region and an exclusive region are computed probabilistically and used in the grouping algorithm. Numerical results show that the narrower radiation beamwidth allows to use a channel more spatially, and the effect of using relaying devices increases as the beamwidth and number of devices increase. Those effects are presented in the throughput and average delay. The obtained results will be used as performance criterion for the multi-hop communications in millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Time-Slotted Scheduling Schemes for Multi-hop Concurrent Transmission in WPANs with Directional Antenna

To achieve high-speed (giga-bit) connectivity for short-range wireless multimedia applications, the millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless personal area networks with directional antennas are gaining increased interest. Due to the use of directional antennas and mmWave communications, the probability of non-interfering transmissions increases in a localized region. Network throughput can be increased immensely by the concurrent time allocation of non-interfering transmissions. The problem of finding optimum time allocation for concurrent transmissions is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we propose two enhanced versions of previously proposed multi-hop concurrent transmission (MHCT) schemes. To increase network capacity, the proposed schemes efficiently make use of the free holes in the time-allocation map of the MHCT scheme; thus, making it more compact.

Analysis of Resource Assignment for Directional Multihop Communications in mm-Wave WPANs

This paper presents an analysis of resource assignment for multihop communications in millimeter-wave (mmwave) wireless personal area networks. The purpose of this paper is to figure out the effect of using directional antennas and relaying devices (DEVs) in communications. The analysis is performed based on a grouping algorithm, categorization of the flows, and the relaying DEV selection policy. Three schemes are compared: direct and relaying concurrent transmission (DRCT), direct concurrent transmission (DCT), and direct nonconcurrent transmission (DNCT). Numerical results show that DRCT is better than DCT and DCT is better than DNCT for any antenna beamwidths under the proposed algorithm and policy. The results also show that using relaying DEVs increases the throughput up to 30% and that there is an optimal beamwidth that maximizes spatial reuse and depends on parameters such as the number of flows in the networks. This analysis can provide guidelines for improving the performance of mm-wave band communications with relaying DEVs.

Low Complexity Codebook-Based Beamforming for MIMO-OFDM Systems in Millimeter-Wave WPAN

In this paper, we consider a beamforming system in millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks (WPAN), where transmit and receive weight vectors are jointly derived by exchanging a training sequence repeatedly with different combinations of transmit and receive weight vectors. We propose a low complexity codebook-based beamforming scheme that consists of multiple levels and level-adaptive antenna selection in order to reduce the beamforming setup time. For each level, 1) the transmit and receive antennas are selected according to pre-determined inter-element spacings, 2) the training sequences are sent with different weight vectors from a pre-defined codebook and 3) the receiver selects the best transmit and receive weight vectors in order to optimize an effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and these vectors are used to determine the codebook for the next following level. Even with low complexity, we show from the numerical results that our proposed scheme can provide an effective SNR gain and an average spectral efficiency approaching those of the codebook-based beamforming with exhaustive search.

On Communication and Interference Range of Multi-Gbps Millimeter-Wave WPAN System

This paper investigates the communication range and interference range of millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks (WPAN) based on realistic system design. Firstly, the effective communication range of the millimeter-wave networks are calculated based on realistic physical (PHY) layer design and 60GHz channel obtained from actual measurements. Secondly, an interference model is developed to facilitate the analysis of the impact of interferer-to-victim range on the victim link performance. It is found that system with BPSK modulation is able to support use cases with higher number of portable devices within a 3m range, while system with 16QAM modulation is more suitable for fixed high speed data streaming devices within a shorter range of 1m. Also, the interferer-to-victim range that causes no interference in all conditions is found to be approximately 40m, while a 25m range causes a typical bit error rate (BER) degradation of 1-digit (e.g. BER = 10-6 to 10-5).

Error performance and throughput evaluation of a multi-Gbps millimeter-wave WPAN system in the presence of adjacent and co-channel interference

This paper investigates the impact of adjacent channel interference (ACI) and co-channel interference (CCI) on error performance and throughput of a multi-Gbps millimeterwave wireless personal area network (WPAN) system in a realistic residential line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) multipath environment. The main contribution of this paper is providing a multi-Gbps WPAN system design in the challenging multipath environment in the presence of ACI/CCI. Based on the investigation results, we have provided ACI/CCI rejection as a reference for victim receiver protection design. In the NLOS environment, the ACI rejection (i.e. ACI that causes 0.5 dB degradation in the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to achieve bit error rate (BER) of 10-6) for pi/2-BPSK, QPSK, 8 PSK and 16 QAM are 13, 7, 0 and -6dB respectively. And the CCI rejection for similar modulation schemes are -18, -20, -26 and -29 respectively. Secondly, we have clarified the LOS-NLOS relationship of the ACI/CCI impact to system performance. ACI in multipath NLOS environment causes an additional 5 dB degradation to error performance as compared to ACI in the LOS environment. CCI on the other hand, has similar impact on error performance in both LOS and NLOS environment. Thirdly, we have clarified the relationship between modulation spectral efficiency and robustness against ACI/CCI. In an environment with no or low ACI/CCI, the maximum achievable throughput for pi/2-BPSK, QPSK, 8 PSK and 16 QAM in LOS environment are 1.2, 2.5, 3.8 and 5 Gbps respectively. In NLOS environment, the achievable throughput decreases to 1, 1.9, 2.8 and 3.8 Gbps respectively. As ACI/CCI increases, the throughput of higherorder modulation schemes such as 16 QAM decreases the most rapidly, followed by 8 PSK and QPSK. The throughput for pi/2-BPSK has the highest tolerance against increasing ACI/CCI, at the expense of lower maximum achievable throughput.

Relay with deflection routing for effective throughput improvement in Gbps millimeter-wave WPAN systems

In this paper, we propose a deflection routing scheme that improves effective throughput (defined as the successfully transmitted bits over the duration between two available sequential time slots) of millimeter-wave wireless personal area network (mmWave WPAN) systems. The upcoming mmWave WPAN is based on dynamic time division multiple access (TDMA) and designed to guarantee Gbps-order transmission capability for high definition TV (HDTV) transmission, high speed wireless docking and gaming, etc. The decode-and-forward (DF) type of relay offers a simple solution to the issues of mmWave WPAN systems, such as limited coverage range and unexpected blockage. However, due to the required extra time, DF relay on the other hand decreases the effective throughput, and may not be sufficient to satisfy the requirement of the above data-rate-greedy applications. Inspired by the fact that the significant path loss of a millimeter-wave environment can provide good space isolation, we propose a deflection routing scheme to improve the effective throughput by sharing time slots for direct path with relay path. Based on the sub-exhaustive search, a routing algorithm, named as best fit deflection routing (BFDR), has been developed to find the relay path with the least interference that maximizes the system throughput. To reduce the computational complexity of the BFDR, we have also developed a sub-optimal algorithm named as random fit deflection routing (RFDR). The RFDR algorithm finds the sub-optimized relay path, where the interference may not be the least but is sufficiently low to guarantee the concurrent transmissions. Computer simulations show that, in realistic 60 GHz environments, the effective system throughput can be improved up to 28% under grid topology and 35% under random topology. RFDR achieves almost the same order of throughput improvement with only 10% of the computational complexity of BFDR.

Virtual time-slot allocation scheme for throughput enhancement in a millimeter-wave multi-Gbps WPAN system

This paper proposes a virtual time-slot allocation (VTSA) scheme for throughput enhancement to realize a multi-Gbps time division multiple access (TDMA) wireless personal area network (WPAN) system in a realistic millimeter-wave residential multipath environment. TDMA system without time-slot-reuse mechanism conventionally allocates one TDMA time-slot to only one communication link at a time. In the proposed VTSA scheme, taking advantage on the large path loss in the millimeterwave band, a single TDMA time-slot can be reallocated and reused by multiple communication links simultaneously (hence the name virtual), thus significantly increasing system throughput. On the other hand, allowing multiple communication links to occupy the same time-slot causes the generation of co-channel interference (CCI). The cross layer VTSA scheme is therefore designed to be able to maximize the throughput improvement by adaptively scheduling the sharing of time-slots, and at the same time monitor the potential performance degradation due to CCI. As a result, it is found that the VTSA scheme is capable of improving system throughput as much as 30% in both AWGN and multipath channels (line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environment). Additionally, by coupling with higher-order modulation schemes, the system is able to achieve up to a maximum throughput of 3.8 Gbps. It is also observed that higher-order modulations although have higher maximum achievable throughput in low CCI environment, the tolerance against increasing CCI is considerably lower than that of the lower-order modulations.

Throughput and Error Analysis of a Space-Time Resource Management Scheme for Multi-Gbps Millimeter-Wave WPAN System

In this paper, throughput and error performance analysis is conducted on the proposed space-time resource management (STRM) scheme to realize a multi-Gbps millimeter-wave wireless personal area network (WPAN) system. The proposed STRM allows multiple peer-to-peer communication links to occupy the same time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) time slot, in contrary to the conventional TDMA system that allocates only one time slot to one communication link. Theoretical analysis is performed to investigate the achievable system throughput in the presence of co-channel interference (CCI) generated by communication links co-sharing the same time slot. To increase accuracy, the analysis results are validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Firstly, it is found that the upper bound of the achievable throughput increases linearly with the number of communication links sharing the same time slot. However, optimum throughput exists corresponding to the CCI present in the system. Secondly, by manipulating a parameter that controls the allowable CCI in the network, the system throughput can be optimized. Lastly, it is also found that in a millimeter-wave band system, a victim system with transmitter-receiver separation of 1-meter can achieve bit error rate (BER) of 10- 6 provided that the interferer is at least 6-meters away.

70-GHz-Band OFDM Transceivers Based on Self-Heterodyne Scheme for Millimeter-Wave Wireless Personal Area Network

70-GHz-band orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transceivers were developed by combining self-heterodyne transmission with two-element diversity reception. The transceivers were used to study and demonstrate a millimeter-wave wireless personal network that enables cost-effective broadband data transmissions in a multipath channel environment. A 100-MHz sampling OFDM modulator/demodulator was developed for the baseband part. It has a payload data rate of 100 Mb/s using quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation and a coding rate of 3/4 (many other modulations and coding rate are available). The bit error rate was experimentally evaluated when a pair of devices was placed on a wooden table under line-of-sight path conditions. The results showed that the combined use of the self-heterodyne technique and two-element diversity receiver successfully avoids serious signal fading at unpredictable transmission distances. The transceiver with QPSK modulation and coding rate of 1/2 for forward error correction achieves error-free data transmission over a distance of up to 3.4 m. In addition, a successful transmission in 64 quadrature amplitude modulation mode was demonstrated, although the communication range was quite short.