A Simulation Framework for Contention-Free Scheduling on WiGig

TL;DR

This paper presents a simulation framework for contention-free scheduling in WiGig mmWave networks, addressing QoS needs for emerging high-bandwidth applications like VR and industrial control.

Contribution

It introduces an end-to-end simulation framework with a baseline scheduling algorithm for mmWave WLANs, enabling performance evaluation of contention-free strategies.

Findings

Contention-free scheduling improves QoS for high-bandwidth applications.

Trade-offs between contention-based and contention-free access are highlighted.

Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Abstract

The latest IEEE 802.11 amendments provide support to directional communications in the Millimeter Wave spectrum and, thanks to the wide bandwidth available at such frequencies, makes it possible to wirelessly approach several emergent use cases, such as virtual and augmented reality, telepresence, and remote control of industrial facilities. However, these applications require stringent Quality of Service, that only contention-free scheduling algorithms can guarantee. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end framework for the joint admission control and scheduling of periodic traffic streams over mmWave Wireless Local Area Networks based on Network Simulator 3, a popular full-stack open-source network simulator. Moreover, we design a baseline algorithm to handle scheduling requests, and we evaluate its performance with a full-stack perspective. The algorithm is tested in three scenarios, where we investigated different configurations and features to highlight the differences and trade-offs between contention-based and contention-free access strategies.