Analyzing the Trade-offs in Using Millimeter Wave Directional Links for High Data Rate Tactile Internet Applications

TL;DR

This paper examines the trade-offs of using millimeter wave directional links for high data rate Tactile Internet applications, focusing on beamwidth-related reliability issues and proposing an adaptive beamwidth scheme to improve link stability.

Contribution

It introduces a beamwidth-adaptation scheme to mitigate misalignment issues in mmWave links for Tactile Internet, enhancing reliability and throughput.

Findings

Narrow beamwidth increases data rate but reduces reliability due to misalignment.

Adaptive beamwidth scheme stabilizes link throughput under misalignment conditions.

Trade-offs between antenna gain and susceptibility to misalignment are quantified.

Abstract

Ultra-low latency and high reliability communications are the two defining characteristics of Tactile Internet (TI). Nevertheless, some TI applications would also require high data-rate transfer of audio-visual information to complement the haptic data. Using Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications is an attractive choice for high datarate TI applications due to the availability of large bandwidth in the mmWave bands. Moreover, mmWave radio access is also advantageous to attain the airinterface-diversity required for high reliability in TI systems as mmWave signal propagation significantly differs to sub-6GHz propagation. However, the use of narrow beamwidth in mmWave systems makes them susceptible to link misalignment-induced unreliability and high access latency. In this paper, we analyze the trade-offs between high gain of narrow beamwidth antennas and corresponding susceptibility to misalignment in mmWave links. To alleviate the effects of random antenna misalignment, we propose a beamwidth-adaptation scheme that significantly stabilize the link throughput performance.