Multimedia streaming applications with stringent QoS requirements in 60GHz mmWave wireless personal area networks (WPANs) demand high rate and low latency data transfer as well as low service disruption. In this paper, we consider the problem of robust relay placement in 60GHz WPANs. Relays forward traffic from transmitter devices to receiver devices facilitating i) the primary communication path for non-line-of-sight (NLOS) transceiver pairs, and ii) secondary (backup) communication path for line-of-sight (LOS) transceiver pairs. We formulate the robust minimum relay placement problem and the robust maximum utility relay placement problem with the objective to minimize the number of relays deployed and maximize the network utility, respectively. Efficient algorithms are developed to solve both problems and have been shown to incur less service disruption in presence of moving subjects that may block the LOS paths in the environment.
@cite_24: In this paper, we propose a cross-layer deflect routing scheme that improves effective throughput of multi-hop millimeter-wave wireless personal area network (mmWave WPAN) system. The upcoming mmWave WPAN is designed to provide Gbps-order transmission capability, targeting applications like high definition TV (HDTV) transmission, high speed wireless docking and gaming etc. Adopting multi-hop relay offers solutions to the issues existing in mmWave WPAN system such as limited coverage range caused by the significant path loss, dramatic communication link change due to the unexpected blockage of the line-of-sight (LOS) path etc. However, multi-hop relay on the other hand decreases the effective throughput because of the required extra time. As a result, the compromised throughput may not be able to support the above applications which are greedy for data rate. Inspired by the fact that the significant path loss of millimeter-wave environment can provide good space isolation, our proposed scheme manages to improve the multi-hop throughput by sharing time slots for relay path with direct path for other transmissions. We also propose two algorithms, namely random fit deflect routing (RFDR) and best fit deflect routing (BFDR), to find the relay path on which the interference due to time slot sharing is low enough to guarantee the concurrent transmissions. Computer simulations show that, in realistic 60GHz environment, the effective multi-hop throughput can be improved up to 45 .
@cite_21: Long-distance multi-hop wireless networks have been used in recent years to provide connectivity to rural areas. The salient features of such networks include TDMA channel access, nodes with multiple radios, and point-to-point long-distance wireless links established using high-gain directional antennas mounted on high towers. It has been demonstrated previously that in such network architectures, nodes can transmit concurrently on multiple radios, as well as receive concurrently on multiple radios. However, concurrent transmission on one radio, and reception on another radio causes interference. Under this scheduling constraint, given a set of source-destination demand rates, we consider the problem of satisfying the maximum fraction of each demand (also called the maximum concurrent flow problem). We give a novel joint routing and scheduling scheme for this problem, based on linear programming and graph coloring. We analyze our algorithm theoretically and prove that at least 50 of a satisfiable set of demands is satisfied by our algorithm for most practical networks (with maximum node degree at most 5).
@cite_12: In this paper, we propose a selection region based multihop routing protocol with directional antennas for wireless mobile ad hoc networks, where the selection region is defined by two parameters: a reference distance and the beamwidth of the directional antenna. At each hop, we choose the nearest node to the transmitter within the selection region as the next hop relay. By maximizing the expected density of progress, we present an upper bound for the optimum reference distance and derive the relationship between the optimum reference distance and the optimum transmission probability. Compared with the results with routing strategy using omnidirectional antennas in [1], we find interestingly that the optimum transmission probability is a constant independent of the beamwidth, the expected density of progress with the new routing strategy is increased significantly, and the computational complexity involved in the relay selection is also greatly reduced.
Our work is also related to multihop routing in wireless networks with directional antenna @cite_24 @cite_21 @cite_12 with two key differences. First, relays in our work are dedicated devices that do not generate or receive application layer packets. Second, we allow at most 2-hop paths between any mmWave transmitter-receiver pair, considering the fact that mmWave WPANs are deployed in small indoor environment with stringent QoS requirement.