An access etiquette for very-wide wireless bands

We propose and analyze a specific set of access rules, or "spectrum etiquet te," for the 59-64 GHz unlicensed band to allow systems from different manu facturers with different physical and medium-access control protocols to co -exist, sharing the large available bandwidth without interference. The pro posed etiquette is unique in that heterogeneous systems are able to co-exis t with one another, without monitoring the entire band, by means of transmi ssions over a common, narrow band control channel used to establish collisi on-free transmission schedules over the channels allocated for data transmi ssion within the 59-64 GHz band. Because no common physical layer can be as sumed among different systems, the control channel is needed for the system s to schedule transmissions in the rest of the band, and the only means by which systems can communicate with one another over the control channel is the duration of each others' transmissions, which are perceived only as noi se. A transmission encoding is defined based on this basic feedback to allo w systems to ascertain which system can use which data channel at which tim e without interference. Analytical and simulation results are presented sho wing that the proposed etiquette is fair to all the co-existing systems, fu lly utilizes the spectrum, provides bounded delays for data-channel acquisi tion time by any given system, and provides minimum channel-use guarantees. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.