WiGig and IEEE 802.11ad for Multi-Gigabyte-Per-Second WPAN and WLAN

[Abstract] The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) and IEEE 802.11ad are developing a multigigabit wireless personal and local area network (WPAN/WLAN) specification in the 60 GHz millimeter wave band. Chipset manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and telecom companies are also assisting in this development. 60 GHz millimeter wave transmission will scale the speed of WLANs and WPANs to
6.75 Gbit/s over distances less than 10 meters. This technology is the first of its kind and will eliminate the need for cable around personal computers, docking stations, and other consumer electronic devices. High-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), display port, USB 3.0, and peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) 3.0 cables will all be eliminated. Fast downloads and uploads, wireless sync, and multi-gigabit-per-second WLANs will be possible over shorter distances. 60 GHz millimeter wave supports fast session transfer (FST) protocol, which makes it backward compatible with 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz WLAN so that end users experience the same range as in today’s WLANs. IEEE 802.11ad specifies the physical (PHY) sublayer and medium access control (MAC) sublayer of the protocol stack. The MAC protocol is based on time-division multiple access (TDMA), and the PHY layer uses single carrier (SC) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to simultaneously enable low-power, high-performance applications.

[Keywords] 60 GHz communications; IEEE standards; WiGig; 802.11ad; contention based access protocol; scheduled protocol; Beamforming;