Scaling WLANs in Spectrum, User Density, and Robustness

People Publications Data Code Funding

The objective of this NSF-funded project is to design the next generation of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) that will meet the ever-growing demands for more spectrum, higher densities, and higher degrees of robustness, moving closer towards the vision of multi-Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) connectivity everywhere. Via a combination of physical (PHY) and link layer innovations, the project will design the first S-T (Sixty Gigahertz to Terahertz) WLAN offering multi-Gbps and Terabit-per-second (Tbps) data rates, supporting both downlink and uplink multi-user multi-stream communication, and providing robust always-on connectivity. The proposed work is divided in three integrated research thrusts:

• Thrust 1: The first thrust will develop new PHY layer techniques that maximize the utilization of the multi-Gigahertz (GHz) wide channels available in S-T communication systems. In the downlink, novel bandwidth hierarchical modulations are proposed as a way to enable simultaneous transmissions from users within the same transmit antenna beam. In the uplink, novel multi-beam codebooks will be designed to increase the path diversity and enable simultaneous directional transmission from users within the same area towards a common access point (AP).

• Thrust 2: The second thrust will first explore the empirical limits of multi-user multi-stream communication in S-T bands. It will then design and evaluate low-overhead user and beam selection protocols for enabling downlink and uplink multi-user multi-stream communication in S-T WLANs, leveraging the hierarchical modulation schemes and multi-beam codebooks from the first thrust.

• Thrust 3:. The third thrust will design the first PHY-assisted link adaptation framework to realize robust S-T WLANs. The thrust will develop algorithms that leverage unique PHY layer metrics to diagnose the cause of link degradation and perform fine-grained mobility and blockage classification. These algorithms will be leveraged to determine when to trigger adaptation and select the right adaptation strategies in different scenarios.

All the proposed solutions will be experimentally evaluated on a one-of-its-kind testbed spanning three different segments of S-T spectrum -- 60 GHz, 300 GHz, and 1 THz. The testbed will expand two existing testbeds at the University at Buffalo, the X60 testbed and the TeraNova testbed.

• Uplink Multi-User Beamforming on Single RF Chain mmWave WLANs.
  Keerthi Dasala, Josep M. Jornet, and Edward Knightly.
  In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2021), May 10-13, 2021.

• 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%)

• Real-Time Digital Baseband System for Ultra-Broadband THz Communication.
  Viduneth Ariyarathna, AArjuna Madanayake and Josep M. Jornet.
  In Proceedings of the 45th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz 2020), Nov. 8-13, 2020.

• A Plasmonic Array Architecture for Multi-beamSpatial Multiplexing at THz Frequencies.
  Arjun Singh, Viduneth Ariyarathna and Josep M. Jornet.
  In Proceedings of the 45th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW-THz 2020), Nov. 8-13, 2020.

• SIMBA: Single RF Chain Multi-User Beamforming in 60 GHz WLANs.
  Keerthi Dasala, Josep M. Jornet, and Edward Knightly.
  In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2020), July 6-9, 2020.

• 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.

• 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%)

• Hierarchical Bandwidth Modulation for Ultra-broadband Terahertz Communications.
  Zahed Hossain and Josep Miquel Jornet.
  In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference in Communications (ICC 2019), Shanghai, China, May 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%)

Source code of our Musher MPTCP scheduler and a set of MPTCP instrumentation tools from our MobiCom 2019 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 Grant CNS-1801903.