QoS Considerations for 60 GHz Wireless Networks

There has been intense commercial interest recently to enable wireless personal area network (WPAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN) applications over 60 GHz. In this paper, we consider the quality of service (QoS) support for usage scenarios that deliver high definition compressed video along with other data applications over 60 GHz in a relatively dense environment. Requirements and potential solutions are identified to support variable bit rate (VBR) traffic and coexistence of overlapping networks. Our investigation shows that a combination of medium access control (MAC) schemes such as time division multiple access (TDMA) with either carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) or polling may provide QoS guarantee while utilizing the channel efficiently. For support of overlapping networks, it is critical to address both intra- and inter-system interference from homogeneous and heterogeneous networks, respectively. While intra-system interference mitigation and management mechanisms should be incorporated into the MAC and physical (PHY) layers design of the system; inter-system interference may be managed through techniques such as common channelization, energy or preamble detection and avoidance.