Noncoherent mmWave Path Tracking

Abstract

Millimeter (mm) wave picocellular networks have the potential for providing the 1000X capacity increase required to keep up with the explosive growth of mobile data. However, maintaining beams towards mobile users and adapting to frequent blockage, requires efficient, dynamic path tracking algorithms. In this paper, we develop and experimentally demonstrate a novel noncoherent compressive strategy for this problem, and compare it with conventional hierarchical and exhaustive beam scanning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental demonstration of practical, scalable path estimation for mmWave/60GHz picocells. Our results indicate the feasibility of sub-second path tracking with low overhead on today's mmWave hardware, and open up a rich space for design of 5G mmWave networks.