On the Potential Benefits of Mobile Access Points in mmWave Wireless LANs

Millimeter-wave communication is a highly promising technology to deliver multi-gigabit-per-second transmission rates for next-generation wireless LANs (WLANs). To achieve such ultra-high throughput performance in indoor scenarios, line-of-sight (LoS) connectivity becomes a critical requirement. Prior work has proposed access point (AP) mobility as an approach to improve LoS conditions and, thereby, approach optimum mmWave WLAN performance. In this work, we present a comprehensive simulation study of linear AP mobility that investigates various dimensions, including the number of mobile APs, the placement of the mobile AP platforms, and the length of the platforms. The results show how WLAN performance varies across these dimensions and also compares the results against a varying number of static APs to quantity the performance gains achievable from mobility. The results show that even 2 or 3 mobile APs can significantly outperform a much larger number of static APs and that deploying up to 3 mobile APs in a room brings substantial performance gains.