Ieee 802.11ad

Multi-Gbps communication is the next frontier in high-speed local and personal wireless technologies, which will offer the necessary foundation for a new wave of applications such as wireless display, high-speed device synchronization, and the evolution of Wi-Fi. The wide harmonized spectrum in the unlicensed millimeter-wave (60 GHz) band is considered the most prominent candidate to support the evolution towards multi-Gbps data rates. As such, the industry is in the process of defining new 60 GHz PHY and MAC technologies that can serve a wide variety of applications and usages, as to avoid the proliferation of non-coexistent devices operating in this unoccupied spectrum. The most promising activity is taking place under the auspices of the IEEE 802.11ad task group, which is defining amendments to the 802.11 standard for operation in the 60GHz band. In this paper we describe the main components of the MAC and PHY amendments included in the current IEEE 802.11ad draft standard and that enable multi-Gbps data rates. We also provide a comprehensive set of simulation results for typical use cases, and argue that 802.11ad is poised to be the standard that will enable mass market adoption of multi-Gbps wireless communication in the 60 GHz spectrum band.