Multichannel Access Control in the IEEE 802.11ad WiGig Networks: Proposal and Analytical Analysis

The use of the 60 GHz millimeter frequency band by the 802.11ad standard (known as WiGig networks) will have a major impact on its protocol architecture. So, it becomes imperative to design new protocols for both MAC (Medium Access Control) and PHY (Physical) layers for allowing, on one hand, the deployment of the WiGig networks in 60 GHz band. On the other hand, for achieving higher speeds of Gbps order. The aim of this paper is proposing an access control protocol at the MAC layer level based on multichannel access of the IEEE 802.11ad standard. The basic principle of the proposed multichannel access control protocol is enabling multiuser access over multiple radio channels. A performance evaluation through mathematical modeling using Markov chains is conducted. The obtained numerical results show that the proposed multichannel protocol provides a significant increase in throughput.