Millimeter wave (mmWave) technologies promise to revolutionize wireless networks by enabling multi-gigabit data rates. However, they suffer from high attenuation, and hence have to use highly directional antennas to focus their power on the receiver. Existing radios have to scan the space to find the best alignment between the transmitter's and receiver's beams, a process that takes up to a few seconds. This delay is problematic in a network setting, where the base station needs to quickly switch between users and accommodate mobile clients. We present Agile-Link, the first mmWave beam steering system that is demonstrated to find the correct beam alignment without scanning the space. Instead of scanning, AgileLink hashes the beam directions using a few carefully chosen hash functions. It then identifies the correct alignment by tracking how the energy changes across different hash functions. Our results show that Agile-Link reduces beam steering delay by orders of magnitude.
In AgileLink REF , fast beamforming is achieved through hashing the beam directions with a few selected hashing functions, and then identifying the correct alignment by analyzing the change on energy for different hashing functions.
Millimeter Wave Communications: From Point-to-Point Links to Agile Network Connections
HotNets '16
Computer Science