TY - GEN
T1 - mmWall
T2 - 20th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2023
AU - Cho, Kun Woo
AU - Mazaheri, Mohammad H.
AU - Gummeson, Jeremy
AU - Abari, Omid
AU - Jamieson, Kyle
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© NSDI 2023.All rights reserved
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Mobile operators are poised to leverage millimeter wave technology as 5G evolves, but despite efforts to bolster their reliability indoors and outdoors, mmWave links remain vulnerable to blockage by walls, people, and obstacles. Further, there is significant interest in bringing outdoor mmWave coverage indoors, which for similar reasons remains challenging today. This paper presents the design, hardware implementation, and experimental evaluation of mmWall, the first electronically almost-360° steerable metamaterial surface that operates above 24 GHz and both refracts or reflects incoming mmWave transmissions. Our metamaterial design consists of arrays of varactor-split ring resonator unit cells, miniaturized for mmWave. Custom control circuitry drives each resonator, overcoming coupling challenges that arise at scale. Leveraging beam steering algorithms, we integrate mmWall into the link layer discovery protocols of common mmWave networks. We have fabricated a 10 cm by 20 cm mmWall prototype consisting of a 28 by 76 unit cell array and evaluated it in indoor, outdoor-to-indoor, and multi-beam scenarios. Indoors, mmWall guarantees 91% of locations outage-free under 128-QAM mmWave data rates and boosts SNR by up to 15 dB. Outdoors, mmWall reduces the probability of complete link failure by a ratio of up to 40% under 0-80% path blockage and boosts SNR by up to 30 dB.
AB - Mobile operators are poised to leverage millimeter wave technology as 5G evolves, but despite efforts to bolster their reliability indoors and outdoors, mmWave links remain vulnerable to blockage by walls, people, and obstacles. Further, there is significant interest in bringing outdoor mmWave coverage indoors, which for similar reasons remains challenging today. This paper presents the design, hardware implementation, and experimental evaluation of mmWall, the first electronically almost-360° steerable metamaterial surface that operates above 24 GHz and both refracts or reflects incoming mmWave transmissions. Our metamaterial design consists of arrays of varactor-split ring resonator unit cells, miniaturized for mmWave. Custom control circuitry drives each resonator, overcoming coupling challenges that arise at scale. Leveraging beam steering algorithms, we integrate mmWall into the link layer discovery protocols of common mmWave networks. We have fabricated a 10 cm by 20 cm mmWall prototype consisting of a 28 by 76 unit cell array and evaluated it in indoor, outdoor-to-indoor, and multi-beam scenarios. Indoors, mmWall guarantees 91% of locations outage-free under 128-QAM mmWave data rates and boosts SNR by up to 15 dB. Outdoors, mmWall reduces the probability of complete link failure by a ratio of up to 40% under 0-80% path blockage and boosts SNR by up to 30 dB.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159301749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85159301749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85159301749
T3 - Proceedings of the 20th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2023
SP - 1647
EP - 1665
BT - Proceedings of the 20th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2023
PB - USENIX Association
Y2 - 17 April 2023 through 19 April 2023
ER -