Emerging 5G applications over mmWave: Hands-on assessment of WiGig radios

Nowadays, many emerging technologies, such as Augmented and Virtual reality, require extremely high-rate data transmissions. This imposes an increasing demand on the network throughput, which currently surpasses the capabilities of commercially available wireless communication systems. To address this constraint, some companies are considering the implementation of high-throughput wired technologies, such as optical fibers, as part of their products. This approach is effective in terms of communication link capacity, but on the other hand may bring disadvantages and constraints in terms of user mobility (i.e., the limited length of cables). Therefore, we are currently witnessing much faster development of novel high-rate wireless technologies, which are considered to be enablers for future 5G applications. This paper offers an evaluation of the emerging IEEE 802.11ad (WiGig) wireless technology capable of delivering multi-gigabit data transfer rates. This hands-on assessment aims at real-world experimentation as well as simulation-based study of selected scenarios to assess the usability of the millimeter-wave technology in prospective 5G applications. All of our practical measurements were conducted on the commercially available WiGig-ready Dell D5000 hardware platforms. The obtained data was comprehensively compared with the corresponding simulation scenario in Network Simulator 3.