Macro-Controlled Beam Database-Based Beamforming Protocol For Lte-Wigig Aggregation In Millimeter-Wave Heterogeneous Networks

LTE-WLAN aggregation architecture, which is under discussion in the 3GPP Release-13, can be extended to LTE-WiGig aggregation provided the millimeter-wave (mm wave) small cell discovery and beamforming (BF) mechanism can be redesigned for the application of this aggregation architecture. In this paper, we propose a novel macro-controlled BF protocol using mm-wave beam databases for LTE-WiGig aggregation in mm-wave heterogeneous networks. This protocol enables an mm wave access point (AP) to communicate with user equipment (UE) using the best beam under the control of LTE macro evolved Node B (eNB). In this protocol, the locations of UEs and mm-wave beam information, including mm-wave AP identification (ID), beam ID, received beam power, etc., are collected by UEs and sent to LTE eNBs. LTE eNBs process all the data and construct the location and mm-wave beam databases for all mm-wave APs. Therefore, just by matching the current UE location with the pre-stored information in the databases, the LTE eNBs can allocate the best mm-wave AP and its best beam to the UE at its current location. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can select the best beam with more than 90% accuracy and achieve more than 18% higher average throughput when the size of the databases is large enough compared to the exhaustive searching scheme due to the decrease in setup time.