NSF mmWave Project

NeTS: Small: Location, Location, Location: Maximizing Network Performance in the mmWave Era

NSF Project Number: CNS–1813242

People

Prof. Douglas Blough
Prof. Raghupathy Sivakumar
Mohit Agarwal
Ang Deng
Qiang Hu
Yubing Jian
Shruti Lall
Yuchen Liu
Shyam Venkateswaran
Yan Yan
Jingyuan Zhang

Goals

This project is focused on location sensitivity of mmWave communication, i.e. that small changes in the location of the transmitter and/or receiver of a mmWave link can have dramatic impact on performance. The major goals are to quantify location sensitivity and to investigate ways in which location sensitivity can be exploited, both at network design time and during network operation, to improve the performance of mmWave networks. Among the techniques investigated to take advantage of location sensitivity are controlled mobility, multiple access points, and the use of relay nodes.

Activities

The project's activities are focused on two network scenarios for mmWave communication: 1) mmWave backhaul networks and 2) mmWave LAN (primarily in the indoor context). For mmWave backhaul networks, we have investigated design of high throughput relay-assisted backhaul networks in urban environments, analyzed the effects of obstacles on backhaul networks, and developed techniques for reconfiguration to provide survivability of backhaul networks in the presence of dynamic obstacles. For mmWave LAN, we investigated access point (AP) mobility and the use of multiple APs to exploit location sensitivity. These activities primarily involved mathematical analyses and a combination of Matlab and ns-3 simulations. For the access point mobility work, a prototype of a ceiling-mounted AP mobility platform was developed and used for evaluation purposes to complement the mathematical analyses and simulation results.

For more details on specific results associated with the above activities, see the project publications listed below. Papers that have already been published can be found through Google Scholar or on the PIs' Web sites (see above URLs) and most are available through the NSF Public Access Repository. For pre-prints of the other papers, contact the PIs.

Publications

The following publications were produced with partial or full support from this NSF award.

J. Zhang and D. Blough, "Optimal Placement of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces with Random Obstacle Distribution" Proc. of IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2023, to appear.
M.S. Zia, D. Blough, and M.A. Weitnauer, "Effects of Beam Misalignment on Heterogeneous Cellular Networks with mmWave Small Cells," Proc. of IEEE Global Communications Conference, pp. 5414-5419, 2022.
Y. Liu and D. Blough, "Environment-Aware Link Quality Prediction for Millimeter-Wave Wireless LANs," Proc. of ACM International Symposium on Mobility Management and Wireless Access, pp. 1-10, 2022. (Best Paper Award)
M.S. Zia, D. Blough, and M.A. Weitnauer, "Uplink Power Control and SNR-Dependent Beam Alignment Errors in mmWave Cellular Networks," Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, 2022.
Y. Jian, C.-L. Tai, S. Venkateswaran, M. Agarwal, Y. Liu, D. Blough, and R. Sivakumar, "Algorithms for Addressing Line-of-Sight Issues in mmWave WiFi Networks using Access Point Mobility," Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, vol. 160, pp. 65-78, 2022.
M.S. Zia, D. Blough, and M.A. Weitnauer, "Effects of SNR-Dependent Beam Alignment Errors on Millimeter-Wave Cellular Networks," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 71, pp. 5216-5230, May 2022.
A. Deng. Y Liu, and D. Blough, "Exploring Performance Limits on Proactive Fair Scheduling for mmWave WLANs," Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks, 2022. (Best Paper Award)
J. Zhang and D. Blough, "Optimizing Coverage with Intelligent Surfaces for Indoor mmWave Networks," Proc. of IEEE Int'l. Conference on Computer Communications, pp. 830-839, 2022.
Y. Liu, Y. Jian, R. Sivakumar, and D. Blough, "Maximizing Line-of-Sight Coverage for mmWave Wireless LANs with Multiple Access Points," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, pp. 698-716, Apr. 2022.
C.-L. Tai, Y. Jian, S. Venkateswaran, Y. Liu, D. Blough, and R. Sivakumar, "Algorithms for Addressing Line-of-Sight Issues in mmWave WiFi Networks using Access Point Mobility," Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, pp. 65-78, Feb. 2022.
S. Lall and R. Sivakumar, "Will They or Won't They?: Toward Effective Prediction of Watch Behavior for Time-Shifted Edge-Caching of Netflix Series Videos," Proc. of IEEE/ACM Symposium on Edge Computing, pp. 257-270, 2021.
Y. Yan, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Load-Balanced Routing for Hybrid Fiber/Wireless Backhaul Networks," Proc. of IEEE Global Communications Conference, 2021.
Y. Liu and D. Blough, "Blockage Tolerance in Roadside Millimeter-Wave Backhaul Networks," Computer Networks, Vol. 198, Oct. 2021.
M.S. Zia, D. Blough, and M.A. Weitnauer, "On the Effects of Blockage on Load Modeling in Millimeter-Wave Cellular Networks," Proc. of the Vehicular Technologies Conference, Fall 2021.
A. Deng, Y. Liu, and D. Blough, "Maximizing Coverage for mmWave WLANs with Dedicated Reflectors," Proc. of IEEE Int'l Conference on Communications, 2021.
S. Lall and R. Sivakumar, "A Real-world Dataset of Netflix Videos and User Watch-Behavior: Analysis and Insights," Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2021.
Y. Yan, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Feasibility of Multipath Construction in mmWaveBackhaul Networks," Proc. of IEEE Int'l Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, pp. 81-90, 2021.
Y. Liu and D. Blough, "Blockage Robustness in Access Point Association for mmWave Wireless LANs with Mobility," Proc. IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, 2020.
Y. Liu, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Joint Link-level and Network-level Reconfiguration for Urban mmWave Wireless Backhaul Networks," Computer Communications, Vol. 164, pp. 215-228, Dec. 2020.
Y. Jian, M. Agarwal, S. Venkateswaran, Y. Liu, D. Blough, and R. Sivakumar, "WiMove: Toward Infrastructure Mobility in mmWave WiFi," Proc. of ACM International Symposium on Mobility Management and Wireless Access, 2020.
S. Lall, U. Parthavi Moravapalle, and R. Sivakumar "MANTIS: Time-Shifted Prefetching of YouTube Videos to Reduce Peak-time Cellular Data Usage," Proc. of ACM Multimedia Systems, 2020
Y. Liu, Y. Jian, R. Sivakumar, and D. Blough, "On the Potential Benefits of Mobile Access Points in mmWave Wireless LANs," Proc. of the IEEE International Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks, 2020.
M.S. Zia, D. Blough, and M.A. Weitnauer, "Coverage in Millimeter-Wave Networks with SNR-Dependent Beam Alignment Errors," Proc. VTC Int'l Workshop on Communication for Networked Smart Cities, 2020.
S. Lall, M. Agarwal, and R. Sivakumar "A YouTube Dataset with User-level Usage Data: Baseline Characteristics and Key Insights," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2020.
Y. Jian, Y. Liu, S. Venkateswaran, D. Blough, and R. Sivakumar, "A Quantitative Exploration of Access Point Mobility for mmWave WiFi Networks," Proc. of IEEE Int'l Conference on Communications, 2020.
Y. Yan, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Optimal Path Construction with Decode and Forward Relays in mmWave Backhaul Networks," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking, and Communications, pp. 579-585, 2020.
Q. Hu and D. Blough, "On the Feasibility of High Throughput mmWave Backhaul Networks in Urban Areas," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking, and Communications, pp. 572-578, 2020.
Y. Liu, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Joint Link-level and Network-level Reconfiguration for mmWave Backhaul Survivability in Urban Environments," Proc. of ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems, pp. 143-151, 2019.
Y. Liu, Y. Jian, R. Sivakumar, and D. Blough, "Optimal Access Point Placement for Multi-AP mmWave WLANs," Proc. of ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems, pp. 35-44, 2019.
Q. Hu, Y. Liu, Y. Yan, and D. Blough, "End-to-end Simulation of mmWave Out-of-band Backhaul Networks in ns-3," Proc. of the Workshop on Next-Generation Wireless with ns-3, pp. 1-4, 2019.
Y. Liu and D. Blough, "Analysis of Blockage Effects on Roadside Relay-assisted mmWave Backhaul Networks," Proc. of IEEE Int'l Conference on Communications, 2019.

Some earlier publications related to the project:

Y. Yan, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Path Selection with Amplify and Forward Relays in mmWave Backhaul Networks," Proc. of IEEE Int'l Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications, 2018.
Y. Liu, Q. Hu, and D. Blough, "Blockage Avoidance in Relay Paths for Roadside mmWave Backhaul Networks," Proc. of IEEE Int'l Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications, 2018.
Y. Jian, S. Lall, and R. Sivakumar, "Toward a self-positioning access point for wifi networks," Proceedings of the 16th ACM International Symposium on Mobility Management and Wireless Access, 2018, pp. 19-28.
Q. Hu and D. Blough, "Optimizing Millimeter-Wave Backhaul Networks in Roadside Environments," Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2018.

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