DC-DLLR: A MAC Layer Approach for Reliable and Blockage Tolerant mmWave Indoor Networks

The imminent global roll-out of fifth generation (5G) telecommunication networks motivates the introduction of millimeter wave (mmWave) access networks as these networks can support very high data-rates at low spectrum costs. However, the susceptibility of mmWave beams to blockage from common indoor objects is a limitation that needs to be addressed. For this, a broad range of multi-link-connectivity (MLC) based approaches have been suggested for implementation in the Physical, MAC and Network layers of the system. However, these techniques tend to use the network resources inefficiently and also require high CAPEX and OPEX. To mitigate these problems, this paper proposes some device-centric dynamic link level redundancy (DC-DLLR) based approaches to regulate redundancy while achieving blockage tolerance. By dynamically regulating the extent of redundancy, this approach improves both the energy and bandwidth efficiency of the network. It also allows systems to operate in both dedicated and heterogeneous network (HetNet) configurations over a variety of deployment scenarios.