People Publications Data Funding

This NSF-funded project is building X60, the first software defined based 60 GHz testbed that offers high level of reconfigurability at the PHY, MAC, and network layers while supporting channel widths and speeds commensurate to those of the 802.11ad standard. X60 consists of four nodes, each including an FPGA-based mmWave Transceiver System from NI and a 12-element phased antenna array from SiBeam that can be configured in real-time. A legacy 802.1ac radio has been added to each node that implements a reliable, out-of-band control channel.

Additionally, the project is developing reconfigurable 60 GHz reflector arrays to enable a smart 60 GHz wireless channel, which can optimally control the propagation direction and signal strength even after the 60 GHz signal is radiated out by the transmitter. Together with the beamforming/beamsteering at the 60 GHz transceivers, the reconfigurable 60 GHz reflector can truly maximize the user capacity in complex and dynamic indoor environment with high density of users.

Fig. 1: NI mmWave transceiver.	Fig. 2: NI/SiBeam 60 GHz prototyping board with 12-element phased array.

X60 offers a number of unique advantages over other experimental 60 GHz platforms: (i) The platform supports 2 GHz RF bandwidth, commensurate to 802.11ad, thus allowing for Gbps rates. (ii) The 12-element phased antenna array and the accompanying software API that offers real-time control of the array characteristics (beamwidth, direction) by changing the antenna weights, allows us to implement and evaluate various beam steering algorithms, unlike previous experimental works that used horn antennas to emulate beam steering. (iii) The use of FPGAs provides full flexibility and enables the implementation of a broader range of communication and networking solutions, ranging from the current standard itself to radically new communication and networking solutions.

X60 will enable a number of research projects across multiple layers of the networking stack and will allow for joint PHY/MAC/network layer experimentation and prototyping towards our vision of multi-Gigabit, always-on WLANs. The offered channel widths and speeds commensurate to those of 802.11ad will allow us to evaluate realistically 802.11ad mechanisms (e.g., beam steering, rate adaptation) that have only been evaluated through simulations or via extrapolation from signal strength measurements, understand their limitations, and propose alternatives.

• 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%)

• Towards Environment Independent Device Free Human Activity Recognition.
  Wenjun Jiang, Chenglin Miao, Fenglong Ma, Shuochao Yao, Yaqing Wang, Ye Yuan, Hongfei Xue, Chen Song, Xin Ma, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Wenyao Xu, and Lu Su.
  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%)

• 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.

X60 dataset (SNR, Impulse Response, Power Delay Profile, RSSI, Throughput, Phase, etc.) from our COMCOM 2018 paper.

This project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation under an NSF CRI Grant CNS-1629929.