LAUSR

A low capital and operational expense (CAPEX, OPEX) based blockage mitigation solution may be needed to provide uninterrupted connectivity in low-budget indoor millimeter-wave (mmWave) scenarios. For this, several solutions based on dynamic-control-delegation (DCD) at the medium-access-control (MAC) layer have been suggested. However, with rapidly changing network-traffic, increased node-mobility and quickly changing blockage characteristics, most of these techniques may fail to provide adequate network coverage. This letter proposes a scalable and inexpensive solution to provide enhanced mmWave coverage in blockage-prone indoor scenarios. This technique is based on the IEEE 802.15.3c supported simultaneously-operated-piconet (SOP) architecture and operates by dynamically re-structuring the SOP hierarchy to mitigate beam-blockages. To study the impact of multiple influencing factors on the SOP, a Markov decision process (MDP) model is employed which uses a stagecoach inspired dynamic-programming approach to find the ideal SOP-structure. Simulation studies validate the efficacy of this method by comparing it to other suggested solutions.