mmNets 2017

Abstract: Millimeter-wave (mmW) wireless is experiencing an explosive growth in research and technology development. Several factors are fueling the growth: the need for Gigabit rates and low latency; advances in mmW hardware, antennas, data converters, computational power, and prototyping platforms; and new paradigms for exploiting the large number of spatio-temporal degrees of freedom afforded by the large bandwidth and small wavelengths. The challenges in harnessing the potential of mmW wireless for communication and sensing are both physical and technological and inherently cross-disciplinary in nature. The tools available for research and technology development are rich and diverse, spanning signal processing and communication techniques, antenna, RF hardware and data converter design, prototype development and experimentation, and machine learning and data analytics. I will discuss the implications with recent developments in hybrid beamforming architectures, the need for cross-layer networking protocols for exploiting the advanced physical layer capabilities, the importance of accurate channel models in network performance prediction and simulation, and the role of channel signatures in sensing applications. I will also highlight the dual and key role of prototyping in mmW technology development: the cross-disciplinary challenges inherent in their design, and their facilitation of much needed channel measurements and experimentation. These findings and insights are informed by my group’s involvement in mmW research and technology development since 2010, and the outcomes of the first two workshops of the NSF Research Coordination Network on mmW wireless.

Bio: Akbar M. Sayeed is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and leads the Wireless Communications and Sensing Laboratory. He received the B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has served the IEEE in a number of capacities, including as a member of Technical Committees, Guest Editor for special issues, Associate Editor, and as Technical Program Co-chair for workshops and conferences. His research interests include wireless communications, channel modeling, statistical signal processing, communication and information theory, time-frequency analysis, machine learning, and applications. A current research focus is the development of basic theory, system architectures, and testbeds for emerging 5G wireless technologies, including millimeter-wave and high-dimensional MIMO systems. He also leads the NSF Research Coordination Network on Millimeter-Wave Wireless.

Abstract: Millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems require a large number of antennas at both base station (BS) and user equipment (UE) for a desirable link budget. Due to time varying channel under UE mobility, up-to-date channel state information (CSI) is important to obtain the beamforming gain. The overhead cost of frequent channel estimation becomes a bottleneck to achieve high throughput. In this talk, the state-of the-art algorithms for mmWave channel tracking are reviewed and compared. A novel  tracking technique is presented for mmWave frequency selective channel using hybrid analog and digital beamforming architecture. During tracking, this technique exploits mmWave channel sparsity and uses only one training symbol to update the CSI. Our simulation study utilizes a dynamic channel simulator that builds on top of recently proposed geometric stochastic approach from mmMAGIC project at 28 GHz. Assuming 10m/s moving speed and 200 deg/s rotation speed at UE, the proposed algorithm maintains the 80% of the spectral efficiency as compared to static environment over a time window of 100 ms. The proposed tracking algorithm reduces the overhead by 3 times as compared to existing channel estimation technique.

Bio: Danijela Cabric received the Dipl. Ing. degree from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1998, and the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001. She received her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007, where she was a member of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. In 2008, she joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is now Associate Professor. Dr. Cabric received the Samueli Fellowship in 2008, the Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2009, Hellman Fellowship in 2012 and the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2012. She served as an Associate Editor in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (Cognitive Radio series) and IEEE Communications Letters, and TPC Co-Chair of 8th International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks (CROWNCOM) 2013. She is now Associated Editor of IEEE Transactions of Cognitive Communications and Networking. Her research interests include novel radio architecture, signal processing, and networking techniques for cognitive radio, 5G and massive MIMO systems.

Abstract: 60 GHz millimeter-wave networking has emerged as the next frontier technology to provide multi-Gbps wireless connectivity. Recently proposed mmWave network standards, like 802.11ad, have spawned a new wave of applications such as wireless virtual reality and uncompressed miracast. However, due to ultra-high carrier frequency, the 60 GHz radios are extremely vulnerable to propagation loss and obstacle blockage. To combat the intrinsic signal attenuation, the use of highly directional phased-array antennas, with limited field-of-view (FoV), makes the mmWave links extremely sensitive to user mobility and orientation change. Hence, achieving stable 60 GHz connectivity, even at room-level, becomes a nontrivial task.

My research has been focusing on a series of techniques to address these challenges. These techniques leverage extraneous sensing information to facilitate the mmWave protocols, so as to provide room-scale coverage at multi-Gbps bit-rate. In this talk, I will first outline the impact of limited FoV of the 60 GHz radio under mobility, and then present a robust 60 GHz network architecture, in which multiple cooperating APs can complement others’ blind spots and together form seamless coverage. I will then describe two design components: pose-assisted link predictor and pose-assisted spatial sharing. They leverage the pose information from mobile devices, and improve the 60 GHz network robustness under mobility through intelligent AP switching and beam selection. Finally, to account for the impact of refections from close-by objects, I will introduce an environment sensing method, which fuses the pose information with the link quality measurement, to computationally discriminate the refection paths and model their impacts separately.

Bio: Teng Wei is a final year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Prof. Xinyu Zhang. He received his B.S. degree in Communication Engineering from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2013. His research interests span areas of wireless networks and mobile systems, with emphasis on designing next-generation multiGbps millimeter-wave networks, and applying wireless signals for ubiquitous passive sensing that enables new Internet-of-things applications. He also has experience in MU-MIMO networking systems, cross-layer protocol design, and signal processing. His research work has been published in top conferences in these areas, especially ACM MobiCom, MobiSys, USENIX NSDI, and IEEE INFOCOM. He interned at Google in 2017 and at Microsoft Research in 2016. He is the recipient of Chancellor’s Opportunity Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013. He also served as the co-chair of ACM S3 2017 workshop and TPC member of MobiSys 2017 Ph.D. Forum.

Abstract: The combination of 4G broadband access and smart devices has transformed all of our lives and opened our eyes to the possibility of mobile broadband access anywhere and everywhere.  5G is more than increased data rates but also increases in capacity, lower latency, and new network topologies that will provide the infrastructure to deliver these new capabilities and services to create a new wireless ecosystem unlocking tremendous economic potential.  With these objectives, the question of spectrum arises.  Spectrum below 6 GHz is scarce and capacity and bandwidth depend largely on spectrum availability.  Knowing this spectrum constraint, researchers are investigating new spectrum frontiers in the cmWave and mmWave frequency ranges presenting unprecedented technical and business challenges. From working with researchers all over the world, NI has been at the forefront of the mmWave explorations mmWave mobile access and gained unique insight.  This talk will review the background and history of these explorations, lessons learned, and also the future challenges that lie ahead. 

Bio: James Kimery is the Director of Marketing for National Instruments Wireless Research and SDR. In addition to the businesses he manages, James is responsible for the company’s 5G strategy, advanced wireless research initiatives such as the Lead User program, and the company’s wireless standardization strategy and efforts. Prior to joining NI, James was the Director of Marketing for Silicon Laboratories' wireless division which became a subsidiary of ST-Ericsson. As Director, the wireless division grew revenues exceeding $250M (from $5M) and produced several industry innovations including the first integrated CMOS RF synthesizer and transceiver for cellular communications, the first digitally controlled crystal oscillator, and the first integrated single chip phone (AeroFONE). AeroFONE was voted by the IEEE as one of the top 40 innovative ICs ever developed. James also worked at National Instruments before transitioning to Silicon Labs and led many successful programs including the concept and launch of the PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) platform. James was a founding member of the VXIplug&play Systems Alliance, VISA working group, and PXI System Alliance. He has authored over 26 technical papers and articles covering a variety of wireless and test and measurement related topics. James holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (MBA) and Texas A&M University (BSEE).

Abstract: The promise of mmWave communications has been embraced by the mobile radio industry. Several mobile radio operators in United States, Japan and Korea have announced technical and/or market trials of mmWave technology. The 3 rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) is currently drafting 5G New Radio (NR) standards to support mmWave frequencies from 20 to over 50 GHz. The ITU is looking at even higher bands up 86 GHz. This talk will focus on the opportunity at 70 GHz to provide a common worldwide allocation for mmWave. The system performance at 70 GHz will be compared to that of popular mmWave bands below 50 GHz. Furthermore, the feasibility of mobile radio co-existence with incumbents in 70 GHz will also be addressed.

Bio: Mark is a Nokia Bell Labs Fellow and a Department Head in the Small Cells Research Group with Nokia Bell Labs in Chicago. His research focuses on cellular network evolution and his team is looking at ways to meet the continued growth in data consumption and expanding diversity of wireless applications. Recently, his team has focused on 5G MIMO system simulations and has made numerous contributions to the 3GPP 5G New Radio work item. In addition, Mark has been leading Nokia’s 5G mmWave proof-of- concept system and has developed a series of demonstrations proving the viability of mmWave for cellular mobility.

Prior to joining Nokia in 2011, Mark was with Motorola for 20 years where he worked on a variety of wireless data systems including APCO 25 and cellular standards from 2G to 4G. Mark has over 40 issued patents, was a Motorola Dan Noble Fellow and holds a M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Abstract: In this talk, Dr. Mezzavilla will provide a description of the most recent activities and key finds conducted at NYU WIRELESS relatively to mmWave communications. The focus will be on NYU's end-to-end research platform, which comprises a channel sounder equipped with 12 steerable antenna elements, a mmWave channel emulator, and a customizable open source network simulator for 5G end-to-end mmWave cellular systems. This platform has been recently awarded a NIST grant to assess the feasibility of mmWave communications for emergency scenarios. Dr. Mezzavilla will then delve into the core of the network simulator, and present some of the most recent results related to the performance of TCP over intermittent mmWave links. 

Bio: Dr. Marco Mezzavilla (mezzavilla@nyu.edu) is a Research Scientist at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where he leads various mmWave-related research projects, mainly focusing on 5G PHY/MAC design. He received the B.Sc. (2007) and the M.Sc. (2010) in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Padova (Italy), and the Ph.D. (2013) in Information Engineering from the same university. He held visiting research positions at the NEC Network Laboratories in Heidelberg (Germany, 2009), at the Telematics Department at Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona (Spain, 2010) and at Qualcomm Research in San Diego (USA, 2012). He has authored and co-authored multiple papers in conferences, journals and some patent applications. He is serving as reviewer for many IEEE and ACM conferences, journals and magazines. His research interests include design and validation of communication protocols and applications to Fourth-generation (4G) broadband wireless technologies, millimeter wave communications for 5G networks, multimedia traffic optimization, radio resource management, spectrum sharing, convex optimization, cognitive networks and experimental analysis.

Abstract: Multi-user transmission at 60 GHz promises to scale the throughput of next generation WLANs via simultaneous transmission of multiple independent data streams. This feature is identified as one of the main design elements of IEEE 802.11ay, next generation of Wi-Fi standards that promises 100-Gbps communications. In this talk, I will describe the motivation and rationale behind multi-user 60 GHz transmissions as well as the technical challenges, including beam steering and user selection. Specifically, I will experimentally show how the choice of users and analog beams are tied together using a programmable wideband testbed with phased antenna arrays. Instead of the joint selection of users and analog beams, I will describe the design of a low-complexity decoupled structure in which beam training precedes user selection. Finally, I will discuss user selection policies in multi-user 60 GHz systems that are possible due to millimeter-wave radio propagation characteristics.

Abstract: Today's high-end virtual reality (VR) systems require a cable connection to stream high- definition videos from a PC or game console to the headset. This cable significantly limits the player's mobility and, hence, the user's VR experience. The high data rate requirement of this link (multiple Gbps) precludes its replacement by today's wireless systems, such as Wi-Fi.

In this talk, I present MoVR, a system that creates a high data rate, millimeter wave (mmWave) link between the PC and the headset. Specifically, I will  explain how we address the two key problems that prevent existing mmWave links from being used in VR systems. First, mmWave signals suffer from a blockage problem. i.e.,  they operate mainly in line-of-sight and can be blocked by simple obstacles such as the player lifting her hand in front of the headset. Second, mmWave radios use highly directional antennas with very narrow beams; they work only when the transmitter’s beam is aligned with the receiver’s beam. Any small movement of the headset can break the alignment and stall the data stream.

Bio: Omid Abari is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He works on wireless networks and IoT systems. During his Ph.D., he designed, built, and deployed new software-hardware systems that deliver ubiquitous sensing, computing, and communications at scale. His research has been featured in Wired, Engadget, Techcrunch, and New Scientist. He was awarded the Merrill Lynch Fellowship in 2011 and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postgraduate Scholarships in 2011 and 2013. He won the ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) in 2014 and 2016. He received a Bachelor’s degree with high distinction in Communications Engineering from Carleton University in Canada, where he was awarded the Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement.