Heterogeneous control and data sub-network for millimeter-wave communications

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications are highly focused as a powerful mean enabling to perform very high data transmission. However it has several inherent shortcomings like directional transmission and serious attenuation in atmosphere. So it is difficult to implement random access in mmWave WLANs. In this paper, a heterogeneous control and data sub-network architecture is presented, which decouples the traditional WLAN into 2.4 or 5GHz control sub-network and mmWave data sub-network in both PHY and MAC layers. In control sub-network, DCF is adopted to transmit control information and in data sub-network, PCF is adopted to ensure the QoS. Moreover, an omnidirectional transmission is employed in the control sub-network to support users' random access. The data sub-network only covers the required serving area by using directional antennas for specific users and can be adjusted dynamically based on control information. Simulations indicate that compared with the conventional WLANs, heterogeneous mmWave WLANs can provide both random access and high throughput.