Communications using frequency bands in the millimeter-wave range can play a key role in future generations of mobile networks. By allowing large bandwidth allocations, high carrier frequencies will provide high data rates to support the ever-growing capacity demand. The prevailing challenge at high frequencies is the mitigation of large path loss and link blockage effects. Highly directional beams are expected to overcome this challenge. In this paper, we propose a stochastic model for characterizing beam coverage probability. The model takes into account both line-of-sight and first-order non-line-of-sight reflections. We model the scattering environment as a stochastic process and we derive an analytical expression of the coverage probability for any given beam. The results derived are validated numerically and compared with simulations to assess the accuracy of the model.
Communications using mm-waves have been initially investigated for indoor and short range applications, where propagation is facilitated by line-of-sight (LOS) conditions and low-mobility. @cite_1 , the authors propose two algorithms for beam searching, selection and tracking in wireless local area networks. They discretize the set of beams and find, by using iterative search, the best beam pair for the transmitter and the receiver. Similarly, the authors in @cite_5 develop a method that compensates link blockage by switching between the LOS link and a non line-of-sight (NLOS) link, whenever the former is blocked. However, they do not provide any analytical model of the beam coverage and blockage probability.
@cite_5 @cite_1
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In this paper, we propose a solution to resolve link blockage problem in 60 GHz WPANs. Line-of-Sight (LOS) link is easily blocked by a moving person, which is concerned as one of the severe problems in 60 GHz systems. Beamforming is a feasible technique to resolve link blockage by switching the beam path from LOS link to a Non-LOS (NLOS) link. We propose and evaluate two kinds of Beam Switching (BS) mechanisms: instant decision based BS and environment learning based BS. We examine these mechanisms in a typical indoor WPAN scenario. Extensive simulations have been carried out, and our results reveal that combining angle-of-arrival with the received signal to noise ratio could make better decision for beam switching. Our work provides valuable observations for beam switching during point-to-point communication using 60 GHz radio. In order to realize high speed, long range, reliable transmission in millimeter-wave 60 GHz wireless personal area networks (60 GHz WPANs), we propose a beamforming (BF) protocol realized in media access control (MAC) layer on top of multiple physical layer (PHY) designs. The proposed BF protocol targets to minimize the BF set-up time and to mitigate the high path loss of 60 GHz WPAN systems. It consists of 3 stages, namely the device (DEV) to DEV linking, sector-level searching and beam-level searching. The division of the stages facilitates significant reduction in setup time as compared to BF protocols with exhaustive searching mechanisms. The proposed BF protocol employs discrete phase-shifters, which significantly simplifies the structure of DEVs as compared to the conventional BF with phase-and-amplitude adjustment, at the expense of a gain degradation of less than 1 dB. The proposed BF protocol is a complete design and PHY-independent, it is applicable to different antenna configurations. Simulation results show that the setup time of the proposed BF protocol is as small as 2 when compared to the exhaustive searching protocol. Furthermore, based on the codebooks with four phases per element, around 15.1 dB gain is achieved by using eight antenna elements at both transmitter and receiver, thereby enabling 1.6 Gbps-data-streaming over a range of three meters. Due to the flexibility in supporting multiple PHY layer designs, the proposed protocol has been adopted by the IEEE 802.15.3c as an optional functionality to realize Gbps communication systems.