People Publications Data Code Funding

This NSF-funded project is developing a Millimeter-Wave multi-layer architecture for general purpose multi-Gigabit WLANs that will offer always-on connectivity in the home/enterprise environment but an order of magnitude higher throughput than today's 2.4/5 GHz WLANs. The proposed architecture is developed in a systematic, bottom-up fashion, starting with an understanding of the Millimeter-Wave channel and its impact on higher layer performance and gradually moving up the layers of the network stack. We adopt a practical approach in which measurement studies, protocol prototyping, and testbed-based evaluation play a central role. Our proposed work is divided in three tasks:

• Task 1: 60 GHz channel measurement and modeling. This task involves the following subtasks: (i) measuring and understanding the impact of location, distance, antenna array orientation, antenna beamwidth, human blockage, and mobility on PHY layer metrics (signal strength, data rate), as well as on higher layer metrics ((TCP/UDP throughput, RTT), (ii) understanding and modeling the interaction between these metrics, and (iii) measuring and modeling the power consumption of 802.11ad transmissions/ receptions.

• Task 2: Measurement-driven 60 GHz MAC protocol design. In this task, we will use the developed models from Task 1 to design MAC layer algorithms and protocols targeting both performance and power savings. We are interested in the following aspects of MAC design: (i) rate and beam adaptation, (ii) adaptive frame aggregation, (iii) loss diagnosis (human blockage vs. client mobility vs. interference).

• Task 3: 60 GHz relays. Relays play a central role in our architecture. In this task, we will start with an 802.11ad-compliant relay architecture and study relay placement algorithms for improving connectivity. We will then gradually add more functionality to relays and study algorithms for extending coverage and improving wireless capacity through concurrent transmission scheduling. We will also develop an online measurement framework and design metrics for relay selection.

• Task 4: Evaluation. We use a combination of standard-compliant COTS devices and proprietary hardware. Our standard-compliant COTS devices include dock stations, routers, and laptops equipped with Wilocity/Qualcomm WiGig/802.11ad radios and phased array antennas. The laptops are controlled by open source drivers (wil6210). Proprietary devices include a pair of HXI radios and a Pasternack/Vubiq 60 GHz development system, equipped with horn antennas of various beamwidths. With colleagues from the EE department at UB, we developed X60, the first software defined based 60 GHz testbed that offers high level of reconfigurability at the PHY, MAC, and network layer and supports channel widths and speeds commensurate to those of the 802.11ad standard. The X60 nodes are based on the NI mmWave Transceiver System from NI and equipped with 12-element phased antenna arrays from SiBeam that can be configured in real-time.

• Throughput Prediction on 60 GHz Mobile Devices for High-Bandwidth, Latency-Sensitive Applications.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Zhaoning Kong, Moinak Ghoshal, Y. Charlie Hu, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the Passive and Active Measurement Conference (PAM 2021), Virtual Conference, March 2021. (acceptance rate 44%)

• 802.11ad in Smartphones: Energy Efficiency, Spatial Reuse, and Impact on Applications.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Moinak Ghoshal, Piyali Banerjee, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Joerg Widmer.
  In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2021), Virtual Conference, May 10-13, 2021. (acceptance rate 19.9%)

• LiBRA: Learning-Based Link Adaptation Leveraging PHY Layer Information in 60 GHz WLANs.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Urjit Satish Sardesai, Viral Sinha, Deen Dayal Mohan, Moinak Ghoshal, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT 2020), Barcelona, Spain, December 1-4, 2020. (acceptance rate 24%)

• An Experimental Study of Rate and Beam Adaptation in 60 GHz WLANs.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Urjit Satish Sardesai, Viral Sinha, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM 2020), Alicante, Spain, November 16-20, 2020. (acceptance rate 25%)

• Poster: Link Adaptation in 60 GHz WLANs using PHY Layer Information.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Urjit Satish Sardesai, Viral Sinha, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In the 21st ACM International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile 2020), Austin, TX, March 3-4, 2020.

• Performance and Pitfalls of 60 GHz WLANs Based on Consumer-Grade Hardware.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Shivang Aggarwal, Hany Assasa, Adrian Loch, Naveen Muralidhar Prakash, Roshan Shyamsunder Anantharamakrishna, Shivang Aggarwal, Daniel Steinmetzer, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Joerg Widmer, and Matthias Hollick.
  Accepted in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), January 2020.

• A First Look at 802.11ad Performance on a Smartphone.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Arvind Thirumurugan, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Millimeter-Wave Networks and Sensing Systems (mmNets 2019), Los Cabos, Mexico, Oct 25, 2019.

• MuSher: An Agile Multipath-TCP Scheduler for Dual-Band 802.11ad/ac Wireless LANs.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Shivang Aggarwal, Rohan Pathak, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Joerg Widmer.
  In Proceedings of the 25th ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2019), Los Cabos, Mexico, Oct 21-25, 2019. (acceptance rate 18.9%)

• Poster: Can Mobile Hardware Keep Up with Today's Gigabit Wireless Technologies?.
  Shivang Aggarwal, Swetank Kumar Saha, Pranab Dash, Jiayi Meng, Arvind Thirumurugan, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Y. Charlie Hu.
  In the 25th ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2019), Los Cabos, Mexico, Oct 21-25, 2019.

• X60: A Programmable Testbed for Wideband 60 GHz WLANs with Phased Arrays.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Yasaman Ghasempour, Muhammad Kumail Haider, Tariq Siddiqui, Paulo De Melo, Neerad Somanchi, Luke Zakrajsek, Arjun Singh, Roshan Shyamsunder, Owen Torres, Daniel Uvaydov, Josep Miquel Jornet, Edward Knightly, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Dimitris Pados, and Zhi Sun.
  In Elsevier Journal of Computer Communications (COMCOM), Volume 133, pages 77-88, January 2019.

• Multi-Stream Beam-Training for mmWave MIMO Networks.
  Yasaman Ghasempour, Muhammad Kumail Haider, Carlos Cordeiro, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Edward Knightly.
  In Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2018), New Delhi, India, October 29-November 2, 2018. (acceptance rate 22.4%)

• LiSteer: mmWave Beam Acquisition and Steering by Tracking Indicator LEDs on Wireless APs.
  Muhammad Kumail Haider, Yasaman Ghasempour, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Edward Knightly.
  In Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2018), New Delhi, India, October 29-November 2, 2018. (acceptance rate 22.4%)

• Fast and Infuriating: Performance and Pitfalls of 60 GHz WLANs Based on Consumer-Grade Hardware.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Hany Assasa, Adrian Loch, Naveen Muralidhar Prakash, Roshan Shyamsunder Anantharamakrishna, Shivang Aggarwal, Daniel Steinmetzer, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Joerg Widmer, and Matthias Hollick.
  In Proceedings of the 15th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON 2018), Hong Kong, June 11-13, 2018. (acceptance rate 23.2%)

• Medium Access and Transport Protocol Aspects in Practical 802.11ad Networks.
  Hany Assasa, Swetank Kumar Saha, Adrian Loch, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Joerg Widmer.
  In Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM 2018), Chania, Greece, June 12-15, 2018.

• Two-dimensional Reduction of Beam Training Overhead in Crowded 802.11ad based Networks.
  Sihua Shao, Hanbin Zhang, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Abdallah A Khreishah.
  In Proceedings of the 1st IEEE Workshop on Millimeter-Wave Networked Systems (mmSys 2018), Honolulu, HI, May 16, 2018.

• Enabling Indoor Mobile Millimeter-wave Networks Based on Smart Reflect-arrays.
  Xin Tan, Zhi Sun, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Josep Miquel Jornet.
  In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2018), Honolulu, HI, May 15-19, 2018. (acceptance rate 19.2%)

• X60: A Programmable Testbed for Wideband 60 GHz WLANs with Phased Arrays.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Yasaman Ghasempour, Muhammad Kumail Haider, Tariq Siddiqui, Paulo De Melo, Neerad Somanchi, Luke Zakrajsek, Arjun Singh, Owen Torres, Daniel Uvaydov, Josep Miquel Jornet, Edward Knightly, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Dimitris Pados, and Zhi Sun.
  In Proceedings of the 11th ACM International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation & CHaracterization (WiNTECH 2017), Snowbird, Utah, USA, October 20, 2017.

• Poster: X60: A Programmable Testbed for Wideband 60 GHz WLANs with Phased Arrays.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Yasaman Ghasempour, Muhammad Kumail Haider, Tariq Siddiqui, Paulo De Melo, Neerad Somanchi, Luke Zakrajsek, Arjun Singh, Owen Torres, Daniel Uvaydov, Josep Miquel Jornet, Edward Knightly, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Dimitris Pados, and Zhi Sun.
  In the 23rd ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2017), Snowbird, Utah, USA, October 16-20, 2017.

• Poster: Can MPTCP Improve Performance for Dual-Band 60 GHz/5 GHz Clients?
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Roshan Shyamsunder, Naveen Muralidhar Prakash, Hany Assasa, Adrian Loch, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, and Joerg Widmer.
  In the 23rd ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom 2017), Snowbird, Utah, USA, October 16-20, 2017.

• A Detailed Look into Power Consumption of Commodity 60 GHz Devices.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Tariq Siddiqui, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Adrian Loch, Joerg Widmer, Ramalingam Sridhar.
  In Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM 2017), Macau, China, June 12-15, 2017.

• 60 GHz Indoor WLANs: Insights into Performance and Power Consumption.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Darshan Godabanahal Malleshappa, Avinash Palamanda, Viral Vijay Vira, Anuj Garg, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Springer Wireless Networks, February 2017.

• A Feasibility Study of 60 GHz Indoor WLANs.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Viral Vijay Vira, Anuj Garg, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Computer Communication and Networks (ICCCN 2016), Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA, August 1-4, 2016.

• Multi-Gigabit Indoor WLANs: Looking Beyond 2.4/5 GHz.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Viral Vijay Vira, Anuj Garg, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2016), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, April 10-15, 2016. (acceptance rate 39%)

• 60 GHz Multi-Gigabit Indoor WLANs: Dream or Reality?
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Viral Vijay Vira, Anuj Garg, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  Technical report, arXiv:1509.04274, September 14, 2015

• Improving Connectivity, Coverage, and Capacity in 60 GHz Indoor WLANs Using Relays.
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Li Sun, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  In Proceedings of the 7th ACM Wireless of the Students, by the Students, and for the Students Workshop (S³ 2015), Paris, France, September 11, 2015.

• On the Feasibility of Indoor IEEE 802.11ad WLANs (abstract).
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Viral Vijay Vira, Anuj Garg, Andrew Tennenbaum, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  Poster, IEEE INFOCOM 2015 Student Workshop, Hong Kong, April 26, 2015.

• A First Look at TCP Performance in Indoor IEEE 802.11ad WLANs (abstract).
  Swetank Kumar Saha, Anuj Garg, and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.
  Poster, IEEE INFOCOM 2015 Poster Session, Hong Kong, April 26 - May 1, 2015.

Source code of our Musher MPTCP scheduler and a set of MPTCP instrumentation tools from our MobiCom 2019 paper.

• 60 GHz throuphput prediction dataset from our PAM 2021 paper.
• 60 GHz smartphone dataset from our INFOCOM 2021 paper.
• 60 GHz link adaptation dataset from our CoNEXT 2020 paper and our MSWiM 2020 paper.
• MPTCP performance characterization over 802.11ad/802.11ac dataset from our MobiCom 2019 paper.

This project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation under a CAREER Award CNS-1553447. Owen Torres was supported by an REU supplemement to this award.