Beam Alignment for Millimetre Wave Links with Motion Prediction of Autonomous Vehicles

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) require ultra-low end-to-end delays and multi-gigabit-per-second data transmission. Millimetre Waves (mmWaves) communications can fulfil these requirements. However, the increased mobility of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), requires frequent beamforming - thus introducing increased overhead. In this paper, a new beamforming algorithm is proposed able to achieve overhead-free beamforming training. Leveraging from the CAVs sensory data, broadcast with Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) beacons, the position and the motion of a CAV can be estimated and beamform accordingly. To minimise the position errors, an analysis of the distinct error components was presented. The network performance is further enhanced by adapting the antenna beamwidth with respect to the position error. Our algorithm outperforms the legacy IEEE 802.11ad approach proving it a viable solution for the future ITS applications and services.Comment: Proc. of IET Colloquium on Antennas, Propagation & RF Technology for Transport and Autonomous Platforms, to appea

MAC Aspects of Millimeter-Wave Cellular Networks

The current demands for extremely high data rate wireless services and the spectrum scarcity at the sub-6 GHz bands are forcefully motivating the use of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies. MmWave communications are characterized by severe attenuation, sparse-scattering environment, large bandwidth, high penetration loss, beamforming with massive antenna arrays, and possible noise-limited operation. These characteristics imply a major difference with respect to legacy communication technologies, primarily designed for the sub-6 GHz bands, and are posing major design challenges on medium access control (MAC) layer. This book chapter discusses key MAC layer issues at the initial access and mobility management (e.g., synchronization, random access, and handover) as well as resource allocation (interference management, scheduling, and association). The chapter provides an integrated view on MAC layer issues for cellular networks and reviews the main challenges and trade-offs and the state-of-the-art proposals to address them