Initial Access Assisted by an Auxiliary Transceiver for Millimeter-Wave Networks

Based on a new transceiver architecture that consists of a hybrid wideband transceiver and an auxiliary full-digital narrow-band transceiver, an efficient initial access scheme is proposed for millimeter wave (mm-wave) networks. The auxiliary transceiver operates in a narrow subband of the overall bandwidth, and is responsible for initial access and small packet/control information transmission. For initial access, the auxiliary transceiver can perform fast transmit (Tx) beam scanning and receive (Rx) beam forming taking advantages of digital MIMO techniques. The corresponding frame structures and protocols are proposed for initial access in the following four scenarios: Single cell stand-alone, single cell overlay, multi-cell stand-alone, multi-cell overlay, where overlay means with assistance from sub-6 GHz network. Numerical evaluations have verified that significant reduction of both beam alignment delay and beacon overhead can be achieved.