A Fast Link Initialization Protocol for Beam-Steering based Cellular Backhaul Systems

Abstract

To deal with the enormous increase of mobile data traffic, new cellular network topologies are necessary. The reduction of cell area and the usage of light-weighted base stations serving only a handful of users, commonly known as the small cell approach, seems to be a suitable solution addressing changes in user expectations and usage scenarios. This paper is an extended version of [1], where current challenges of small cell deployments were presented from a backhaul perspective. A mesh-type backhaul network topology based on beam-steering millimeter-wave systems was proposed as a future-proof solution. In this paper, we focus on a link initialization protocol for beam-steering with highly directive antennas. Special requirements and problems for link setup are analyzed. Based on that, a fast protocol for link initialization is presented and it is evaluated in terms of the resulting initialization speed-up compared to state-of-the-art solutions. Furthermore, a potential approach for extending the fast link initialization protocol to support point-to-multipoint connections is given.