Multi-User MIMO Enabled Virtual Reality in IEEE 802.11ay WLAN

PubDate: May 2022

Teams: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg

Writers: Jiayi Zhang; Steve Blandino; Neeraj Varshney; Jian Wang; Camillo Gentile; Nada Golmie

PDF: Multi-User MIMO Enabled Virtual Reality in IEEE 802.11ay WLAN

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) coupled with 360° video has been used in a variety of areas, including gaming, remote learning, and healthcare, among others. The 360° video on which VR applications are based today is mostly low resolution and, in order to improve the user experience, bandwidth requirements must increase significantly. Spatial multiplexing (SM) at millimeter wave (mmWave) is an enabling technology introduced in IEEE 802.11ay to support high throughput applications. However, since IEEE 802.11ay commercial off-the-shelf devices are not yet available and the cost for implementation of mmWave testbeds is prohibitive, the expected SM performance in a real application is still unknown. In this paper, we design a mmWave multi-user (MU)-multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) link-level high fidelity simulation platform, based on IEEE 802.11ay, which is shared as an open source code package. Our simulation platform consists of a measurement-based mmWave channel model and a digital transceiver. To support VR applications, we design the analog-digital hybrid precoders and combiners, enabling SM for MU-MIMO transmissions. We provide an extensive evaluation of the IEEE 802.11ay PHY in terms of throughput and error rates. Our platform reveals that in a living room environment, two users can support up to four streams achieving more than 20Gbit/sec data-rate per user, enabling the transmission of uncompressed 4K videos.