A Link Quality Estimation-based Beamforming Training Protocol for IEEE 802.11ay MU-MIMO Communications.

Area of Science:

• Wireless communication systems
• Signal processing
• Antenna theory

Background:

• Multi-user multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) beamforming training (BFT) is crucial for establishing directional antenna patterns between access points (APs) and stations (STAs).
• Inefficient antenna weight vector (AWV) determination during BFT can lead to increased transmissions and prolonged training times.
• Existing schemes using simultaneous multi-beam transmissions for signaling overhead mitigation overlook transmit diversity gains, resulting in redundant transmissions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel transmit antenna configuration scheme for MU-MIMO BFT.
• To mitigate signaling overhead and reduce BFT duration.
• To address the limitations of existing schemes by incorporating transmit diversity gains.

Main Methods:

• Developing a new scheme that determines candidate AWVs using multiple beams.
• Simultaneously transmitting action frames using multiple beams to identify reachable STAs.
• Considering the transmit diversity of the inter-symbol interference (ISI) channel in multi-beam concurrent transmissions.

Main Results:

• The proposed scheme effectively mitigates signaling overhead.
• Numerical and simulation results show a reduction in BFT time compared to existing methods.
• The scheme successfully identifies STAs within reach of multi-beam concurrent transmissions.

Conclusions:

• The novel transmit antenna configuration scheme significantly shortens MU-MIMO BFT time.
• Accounting for transmit diversity in multi-beam transmissions is key to reducing overhead.
• This approach offers an efficient solution for optimizing BFT in wireless networks.