Steer+: Robust Beam Refinement for Full-Duplex Millimeter Wave Communication Systems (Invited Paper)

Recent efforts have highlighted the feasibility of upgrading millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems with full-duplex capability by harnessing beamforming to cancel self-interference. However, much of this proposed work has been theoretical in nature, has overlooked practical considerations, and has been validated purely through numerical simulation. In contrast, this work introduces a novel beam refinement technique suitable for practical full-duplex mmWave systems, which we experimentally evaluate using off-the-shelf 60 GHz phased arrays. The proposed approach, which we call Steer+, improves upon our prior work with added robustness, allowing a full-duplex mmWave communication system to close the link via traditional beam alignment and simultaneously reduce self-interference to near or even below the noise floor. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness of Steer+ and its ability to more reliably increase SINR, compared to beam selection which purely maximizes SNR or minimizes self-interference.