Air Interface and Physical Layer techniques for 60 GHz WPANs

Thanks to the unprecedented availability of huge bandwidth, the capacity offered by wireless systems in the 60 GHz band can exceed the mythical barrier of 1 Gbps wireless, enabling the deployment of new applications. However, the performance can be limited by the non-ideality of the analog front-ends, multipath fading and the difficulty to achieve a reasonable link budget at high data rates. The goal of this paper is to introduce high rate communications in the 60 GHz band and the associated challenges. We will first introduce WPANs in the 60 GHz band, describing the possible applications, the propagation channel and the standardization context. Furthermore, based on the characteristics of the propagation channel, we will show that beamforming is desirable to boost the link budget, reduce interference and, in some cases, reduce multipath. Next, we will introduce candidate PHY layer solutions that at the same time meet the throughput requirements and relax the analog front-end design. Our solutions rely on the combination of block transmission combined with (nearly) constant envelope modulation: this provides low peak-to-average power ratios, easy equalization, good spectral properties and modest front-end requirements in terms of phase noise and ADC resolution. The receiver signal processing associated with the modulation techniques will be described and link level simulation results will be provided, highlighting the "front-end friendliness" of the modulation technique