A fundamental question in multihop wireless network protocol design is how to partition the network's transport capacity among contending flows. A classically "fair” allocation leads to poor throughput performance for all flows because connections that traverse a large number of hops (i.e., long connections) consume a disproportionate share of resources. However, naïvely biasing against longer connections can lead to poor network utilization, because a significantly high fraction of total connections are long in large networks with spatially uniform traffic. While proportional fair allocation provides a significant improvement, we show here that there is a much richer space of resource allocation strategies for introducing a controlled bias against resource-intensive long connections in order to significantly improve the performance of shorter connections. Specifically, mixing strongly biased allocations with fairer allocations leads to efficient network utilization as well as a superior trade-off between flow throughput and fairness. We present an analytical model that offers insight into the impact of a particular resource allocation strategy on network performance, taking into account finite network size and spatial traffic patterns. We point to protocol design options to implement our resource allocation strategies by invoking the connection with the well-studied network utility maximization framework. Our simulation evaluation serves to verify the analytical design prescriptions.

We investigate spatial interference statistics for multigigabit outdoor mesh networks operating in the unlicensed 60-GHz “millimeter (mm) wave” band. The links in such networks are highly directional: Because of the small carrier wavelength (an order of magnitude smaller than those for existing cellular and wireless local area networks), narrow beams are essential for overcoming higher path loss and can be implemented using compact electronically steerable antenna arrays. Directionality drastically reduces interference, but it also leads to “deafness,” making implicit coordination using carrier sense infeasible. In this paper, we make a quantitative case for rethinking medium access control (MAC) design in such settings. Unlike existing MAC protocols for omnidirectional networks, where the focus is on interference management, we contend that MAC design for 60-GHz mesh networks can essentially ignore interference and must focus instead on the challenge of scheduling half-duplex transmissions with deaf neighbors. Our main contribution is an analytical framework for estimating the collision probability in such networks as a function of the antenna patterns and the density of simultaneously transmitting nodes. The numerical results from our interference analysis show that highly directional links can indeed be modeled as pseudowired, in that the collision probability is small even with a significant density of transmitters. Furthermore, simulation of a rudimentary directional slotted Aloha protocol shows that packet losses due to failed coordination are an order of magnitude higher than those due to collisions, confirming our analytical results and highlighting the need for more sophisticated coordination mechanisms.

Multi-gigabit outdoor mesh networks operating in the unlicensed 60 GHz "millimeter (mm) wave" band, offer the possibility of a quickly deployable broadband extension of the Internet. We consider mesh nodes with electronically steerable antenna arrays, with both the transmitter and receiver synthesizing narrow beams that compensate for the higher path loss at mm-wave frequencies, achieving ranges on the order of 100 meters using the relatively low transmit powers attainable with low-cost silicon implementations. Such highly directional networking differs from WiFi networks at lower carrier frequencies in two ways that have a crucial impact on protocol design: (1) directionality drastically reduces spatial interference, so that pseudowired link abstractions form an excellent basis for protocol design; (2) directionality induces deafness, which makes medium access control (MAC) based on carrier sensing infeasible. Interference analysis in our prior work shows that, in such a setting, coordination between transmitters and receivers, rather than interference management, becomes the key MAC performance bottleneck. However, the question of whether such coordination can be achieved in a distributed fashion while achieving high medium utilization, was left open. In this paper, we answer this question in the affirmative, presenting a distributed MAC protocol that employs memory to achieve approximate time division multiplexed (TDM) schedules without explicit coordination or resource allocation. The efficacy of the protocol is demonstrated via packet level simulations, while a Markov chain fixed-point analysis provides insight into the effect of parameter choices.

We investigate an architecture for multi-Gigabit outdoor mesh networks operating in the unlicensed 60 GHz "millimeter (mm) wave" band. In this band, the use of narrow beams is essential for attaining the required link ranges in order to overcome the higher path loss at mm wave carrier frequencies. However, highly directional links make standard MAC methods for interference management, such as carrier sense multiple access, which rely on neighboring nodes hearing each other, become inapplicable. In this paper, we study the extent to which we can reduce, or even dispense with, interference management, by exploiting the reduction in interference due to the narrow beamwidths and the oxygen absorption characteristic of the 60 GHz band. We provide a probabilistic analysis of the interference incurred due to uncoordinated transmissions, and show that, for the parameters considered, the links in the network can be thought of as pseudo-wired. That is, interference can essentially be ignored in MAC design, and the challenge is to schedule half-duplex transmissions in the face of the "deafness" resulting from highly directional links. We provide preliminary simulation results to validate our approach.

We present a cross-layer modeling and design approach for multiGigabit indoor wireless personal area networks (WPANs) utilizing the unlicensed millimeter (mm) wave spectrum in the 60 GHz band. Our approach accounts for the following two characteristics that sharply distinguish mm wave networking from that at lower carrier frequencies. First, mm wave links are inherently directional: directivity is required to overcome the higher path loss at smaller wavelengths, and it is feasible with compact, low-cost circuit board antenna arrays. Second, indoor mm wave links are highly susceptible to blockage because of the limited ability to diffract around obstacles such as the human body and furniture. We develop a diffraction-based model to determine network link connectivity as a function of the locations of stationary and moving obstacles. For a centralized WPAN controlled by an access point, it is shown that multihop communication, with the introduction of a small number of relay nodes, is effective in maintaining network connectivity in scenarios where single-hop communication would suffer unacceptable outages. The proposed multihop MAC protocol accounts for the fact that every link in the WPAN is highly directional, and is shown, using packet level simulations, to maintain high network utilization with low overhead.

Throughput performance of multihop wireless networks is governed by how the network's transport capacity (in bit-meters per second) is partitioned among different network flows. Max-min fair allocation leads to poor throughput performance for all flows because connections traversing a large number of hops consume a disproportionate share of resources. While proportional fair allocation provides a significant improvement, we point out here that there is a much richer space of resource allocation strategies for introducing a controlled bias against resource-intensive long connections in order to significantly improve the performance of shorter connections. We present an analytical model that gives insight into the impact of a particular resource allocation strategy on network performance, in a manner that captures the effect of finite network size and spatial traffic patterns. Our simulation results demonstrate that it is possible to provide significantly better performance to shorter connections than max-min fair or proportional fair resource allocations, with minimal impact on the performance of long connections, using mixed bias strategies blending "fair" allocations with a strong bias against long connections.

The 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 60 GHz band offers the potential for multiGigabit indoor wireless personal area networking (WPAN). With recent advances in the speed of silicon (CMOS and SiGe) processes, low-cost transceiver realizations in this "millimeter (mm) wave" band are within reach. However, mm wave communication links are more fragile than those at lower frequencies (e.g., 2.4 or 5 GHz) because of larger propagation losses and reduced diffraction around obstacles. On the other hand, directional antennas that provide directivity gains and reduction in delay spread are far easier to implement at mm-scale wavelengths. In this paper, we present a cross-layer modeling methodology and a novel multihop medium access control (MAC) architecture for efficient utilization of 60 GHz spectrum, taking into account the preceding physical characteristics. We propose an in-room WPAN architecture in which every link is constrained to be directional, for improved power efficiency (due to directivity gains) and simplicity of implementation (due to reduced delay spread). We develop an elementary diffraction-based model to determine network link connectivity, and define a multihop MAC protocol that accounts for directional transmission/reception, procedures for topology discovery and recovery from link blockages.