MAC Protocols for mmWave Communication: A Comparative Survey

With the increase in the number of connected devices, to facilitate more users with high-speed transfer rate and enormous bandwidth, millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology has become one of the promising research sectors in both industry and academia. Owing to the advancements in 5G communication, traditional physical (PHY) layer-based solutions are becoming obsolete. Resource allocation, interference management, anti-blockage, and deafness are crucial problems needing resolution for designing modern mmWave communication network architectures. Consequently, comparatively new approaches such as medium access control (MAC) protocol-based utilization can help meet the advancement requirements. A MAC layer accesses channels and prepares the data frames for transmission to all connected devices, which is even more significant in very high frequency bands, i.e., in the mmWave spectrum. Moreover, different MAC protocols have their unique limitations and characteristics. In this survey, to deal with the above challenges and address the limitations revolving around the MAC layers of mmWave communication systems, we investigated the existing state-of-the-art MAC protocols, related surveys, and solutions available for mmWave frequency. Moreover, we performed a categorized qualitative comparison of the state-of-the-art protocols and finally examined the probable approaches to alleviate the critical challenges in future research.