Silent Tracker: In-band Beam Management for Soft Handover for mm-Wave Networks

TL;DR

Silent Tracker introduces an in-band beam management method for mm-wave networks that ensures seamless soft handovers by maintaining beam alignment without side information, improving connection reliability during mobility.

Contribution

It presents a novel in-band beam management mechanism that maintains beam alignment during handovers without requiring external signals or side information.

Findings

Maintains beam alignment during handover in various mobility scenarios

Reduces packet loss and hard handovers in mm-wave networks

Effective at speeds up to 20 mph

Abstract

In mm-wave networks, cell sizes are small due to high path and penetration losses. Mobiles need to frequently switch softly from one cell to another to preserve network connections and context. Each soft handover involves the mobile performing directional neighbor cell search, tracking cell beam, completing cell access request, and finally, context switching. The mobile must independently discover cell beams, derive timing information, and maintain beam alignment throughout the process to avoid packet loss and hard handover. We propose Silent tracker which enables a mobile to reliably manage handover events by maintaining an aligned beam until the successful handover completion. It is entirely in-band beam mechanism that does not need any side information. Experimental evaluations show that Silent Tracker maintains the mobile's receive beam aligned to the potential target base station's transmit beam till the successful conclusion of handover in three mobility scenarios: human walk, device rotation, and 20 mph vehicular speed.