Optimal opportunistic transmissions over directional mm wave channels

Future millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency networks leveraging great swaths of unlicensed bandwidth, dense access point deployments, and beamforming may satiate the current demand for higher throughput. In a dense network, a centralized scheduling approach becomes infeasible. Therefore a user may opportunistically transmit to one of the multiple access points (AP) in its vicinity. Leveraging the AP diversity, a user may probe several APs before selecting a destination for the transmission. However, it is possible that the destination AP becomes unavailable or is in blockage when the user decides to transmit due to the density of the network. We present a novel mm Wave opportunistic network model which encompasses the probability of an AP becoming unavailable. Our optimal opportunistic transmission strategy maximizes the throughput of an opportunistic user. Results show that when users are unwilling to bear large delays, our strategy outperforms alternative methods. Additionally, our strategy performs equally to alternatives when users can shoulder the burden of delay.