The Transitional Behavior of Interference in Millimeter Wave Networks and Its Impact on Medium Access Control

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems use a large number of antenna elements that can potentially overcome severe channel attenuation by narrow beamforming. Narrow-beam operation in mmWave networks also reduces multiuser interference, introducing the concept of noise-limited wireless networks as opposed to interference-limited ones. The noise-limited or interference-limited regime heavily reflects on the medium access control (MAC) layer throughput and on proper resource allocation and interference management strategies. Yet, these regimes are ignored in current approaches to mmWave MAC layer design, with the potential disastrous consequences on the communication performance. In this paper, we investigate these regimes in terms of collision probability and throughput. We derive tractable closed-form expressions for the collision probability and MAC layer throughput of mmWave ad hoc networks, operating under slotted ALOHA. The new analysis reveals that mmWave networks may exhibit a non-negligible transitional behavior from a noise-limited regime to an interference-limited one, depending on the density of the transmitters, density and size of obstacles, transmission probability, operating beamwidth, and transmission power. Such transitional behavior necessitates a new framework of adaptive hybrid resource allocation procedure, containing both contention-based and contention-free phases with on-demand realization of the contention-free phase. Moreover, the conventional collision avoidance procedure in the contention-based phase should be revisited, due to the transitional behavior of interference, to maximize throughput/delay performance of mmWave networks. We conclude that, unless proper hybrid schemes are investigated, the severity of the transitional behavior may significantly reduce throughput/delay performance of mmWave networks.