Radar-enhanced mm-wave agile beamsteering: demo

We demonstrate RadMAC, a radar-enhanced MAC protocol for agile mm-wave beamsteering supporting seamless high speed wireless connectivity. RadMAC uses radar to track moving obstacles and avoid primary mm-wave link disruption by preemptively beam-switching to/from the best unblocked secondary mm-wave link. Our RadMAC proof-of-concept implementation is based on an open-source software defined mm-wave transceiver operating at 60 GHz combined with a mm-wave single-chip radar platform. In the demonstration, we set up a link blockage experiment where a human walks through the LOS link between the AP and client node. We will show re-steering to/from a secondary NLOS link as the obstacle approaches and passes through the link. Real-time obstacle tracking radar data will be displayed, based on which RadMAC makes its beam-switching decisions. Real-time RSS measurements of the mm-wave link quality will also be displayed, to illustrate the benefit of RadMAC for maintaining a stable high-speed data rate in obstacle-rich indoor network environments.