# Statistical Location and Rotation-Aware Beam Search for Millimeter-Wave Networks

## TL;DR

This paper introduces SLASH, a novel beam search algorithm that uses sub-6 GHz WiFi measurements to improve link maintenance and establishment in millimeter-wave networks, especially under device rotation.

## Contribution

It proposes a rotation-aware beam search method that leverages WiFi-based rotation and position estimates to enhance mm-wave link performance without inertial sensors.

## Key findings

- SLASH increases data rate by over 41% for link establishment.
- SLASH improves link maintenance data rate by 67%.
- The method effectively handles device rotation without inertial sensors.

## Abstract

Beam training in dynamic millimeter-wave (mm-wave) networks with mobile devices is highly challenging as devices must scan a large angular domain to maintain alignment of their directional antennas under mobility. Device rotation is particularly challenging, as a handheld device may rotate significantly over a very short period of time, causing it to lose the connection to the Access Point (AP) unless the rotation is accompanied by immediate beam realignment. We study how to maintain the link to a mm-wave AP under rotation and without any input from inertial sensors, exploiting the fact that mm-wave devices will typically be multi-band. We present a model that maps Time-of-Flight measurements to rotation and propose a method to infer the rotation speed of the mobile terminal using only measurements from sub-6 GHz WiFi. We also use the same sub-6 GHz WiFi system to reduce the angle error estimate for link establishment, exploiting the spatial geometry of the deployed APs and a statistical model that maps the user position's spatial distribution to an angle error distribution. We leverage these findings to introduce SLASH, a Statistical Location and rotation-Aware beam SearcH algorithm that adaptively narrows the sector search space and accelerates both link establishment and maintenance between mm-wave devices. We evaluate SLASH with experiments conducted indoors with a sub-6 GHz WiFi Time-of-Flight positioning system and a 60-GHz testbed. SLASH can increase the data rate by more than 41% for link establishment and 67% for link maintenance with respect to prior work.