Implementation and Evaluation of a WLAN IEEE 802.11ay Model in Network Simulator ns-3

Published

June 23, 2021

Author(s)

Hany Assasa, Nina Grosheva, Tanguy Ropitault, Steve Blandino, Nada T. Golmie, Joerg Widmer

Abstract

The IEEE Task Group ay (TGay) has recently defined new physical and medium access control specifications to design the next generation wireless standard in the 60 GHz band, the so-called IEEE 802.11ay. Build upon its 802.11ad predecessor, IEEE 802.11ay aims to offer unprecedented performance (100 Gbps throughput, ultra-low latency) by introducing various technological advancements such as multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communication, channel bonding/aggregation, and new beamforming techniques. Such performance paves the way to new emerging wireless applications such as millimeter-wave distribution networks, data center interrack connectivity, mobile offloading, augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), and 8K video streaming. Studying and analyzing these new use-cases is of paramount importance and demands high fidelity network-level simulator due to the scarcity/costs of real IEEE 802.11ay test-beds. In this paper,we present our implementation of the IEEE 802.11ay standard in the network simulator ns-3. Our implementation captures the specifics of IEEE 802.11ay operations such as 11ay frame structure, channel bonding, new beamforming training procedures, quasi-deterministic MIMO channel support, and Single-User (SU)-MIMO (SU-MIMO)/ Multi-User (MU)-MIMO (MU-MIMO) beamforming training. We validate and demonstrate by simulations the performance of the aforementioned techniques. The code for our simulation model is publicly available.

Proceedings Title

Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3 2021)

Conference Dates

June 23-25, 2021

Conference Location

Gaithersburg, MD, US

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Millimeter Wave, IEEE 802.11ay, 60 GHz, WiGig, MIMO, ns-3, Simulations

Citation

Assasa, H. , Grosheva, N. , Ropitault, T. , Blandino, S. , Golmie, N. and Widmer, J. (2021), Implementation and Evaluation of a WLAN IEEE 802.11ay Model in Network Simulator ns-3, Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3 2021), Gaithersburg, MD, US, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932092 (Accessed October 27, 2025)