ZTE Communications ›› 2012, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (4): 13-22.

• Special Topic • Previous Articles     Next Articles

WiGig and IEEE 802.11ad for Multi-Gigabyte-Per-Second WPAN and WLAN

Sai Shankar N, Debashis Dash, Hassan El Madi, and Guru Gopalakrishnan   

  1. Tensorcom Inc., 5900 Pasteur Court, Carlsbad, CA 92008, USA
  • Received:2012-09-10 Online:2012-12-25 Published:2012-12-25
  • About author:Sai Shankar N (nsai@tensorcom.com) received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1998. He received a DAAD fellowship and joined the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. There, he worked on queueing approaches in manufacturing. In 1999, he joined Philips Research, Eindhoven, and worked on IEEE 802.15 HFC networks and differentiated services. In 2001, he was transferred to Philips Research, New York, and worked on IEEE 802.11e, IEEE 802.11n, MBOA UWB and IEEE 802.22. EE Times nominated him as one of five finalists for his contributions to UWB MAC. In 2005, he worked at Qualcomm in San Diego on IEEE 802.11s, and RLC and MAC-hs issues in HSPA. In 2007, he worked on 802.11 AMP in Bluetooth SIG and 60 GHz at Broadcom Corporation. Currently, he is leading 60 GHz FW and MAC HW solutions at Tensorcom.

    Debashis Dash received his B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 2004. He received his MS degree from Rice University, Houston, in 2007. He is a PhD candidate at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University. He currently works at Tensorcom, San Diego. His research interests include information theory and graph theory and their applications in wireless systems.

    Hassan El Madi received his BS degree in computer engineering from the University of California, San Diego, in 2007. He received his M.Eng. degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis on wireless communications from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, in 2010. He currently works as a software staff engineer at Tensorcom, San Diego. His research interests include cognitive radios—spectrum sensing, automatic modulation classification, geolocalization—as well as design and implementation of WLAN and WPAN MAC and PHY layers.

    Guru Gopalakrishnan received his BE degree in electronics and communication from Anna University, India, in 2006. He received his MS degree in electrical engineering (computer networks) from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in 2009. He earlier worked at Broadcom Corporation, San Diego in Bluetooth and Bluetooth low energy technologies and is currently at Adeptence, San Diego. His research interests include throughput and power optimizations for wireless systems.

Abstract: The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) and IEEE 802.11ad are developing a multigigabit wireless personal and local area network (WPAN/ WLAN) specification in the 60 GHz millimeter wave band. Chipset manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and telecom companies are also assisting in this development. 60 GHz millimeter wave transmission will scale the speed of WLANs and WPANs to 6.75 Gbit/s over distances less than 10 meters. This technology is the first of its kind and will eliminate the need for cable around personal computers, docking stations, and other consumer electronic devices. High-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), display port, USB 3.0, and peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) 3.0 cables will all be eliminated. Fast downloads and uploads, wireless sync, and multi-gigabit-per-second WLANs will be possible over shorter distances. 60 GHz millimeter wave supports fast session transfer (FST) protocol, which makes it backward compatible with 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz WLAN so that end users experience the same range as in today’s WLANs. IEEE 802.11ad specifies the physical (PHY) sublayer and medium access control (MAC) sublayer of the protocol stack. The MAC protocol is based on time-division multiple access (TDMA), and the PHY layer uses single carrier (SC) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to simultaneously enable low-power, high-performance applications.

Key words: 60 GHz communications, IEEE standards, WiGig, 802.11ad, contention based access protocol, scheduled protocol, Beamforming, power save