Variable Beam Width Selection for Improving the Throughput of IEEE 802.11ad Wireless LAN in the Contention Based Access Period

The hybrid MAC protocol specified by IEEE 802.11ad for millimeter wave wireless LANs consist of carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) during the contention based access periods (CBAPs) and TDMA during the service periods. To provide channel access during CBAP, the coverage area around the access point (AP) can be divided into several quasi omni (QO) beam levels. When uplink channel access during CBAP is considered, every directional multigigabit station residing within a QO level uses CSMA/CA protocol for getting the transmission opportunity. With equal beam width receive QO levels at the AP, we present an analytical model to compute the uplink throughput of the network in the CBAP, by closely following the 802.11ad MAC protocol specifications. We demonstrate that PHY layer MCS (modulation and coding scheme) dependent adaptive selection of QO levels can improve the throughput performance. In the second part of the paper, we consider that PCP/AP can have at most three radios, each tuned to operate in non-overlapping frequency bands as specified by 802.11ad PHY. We establish that such an arrangement can lead to concurrent transmissions in the network and improve the uplink throughput performance.