Tarafder Pulok, Choi Wooyeol
Department of Computer Engineering, Chosun University, Gwangju 61452, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 May 19;22(10):3853. doi: 10.3390/s22103853.
With the increase in the number of connected devices, to facilitate more users with high-speed transfer rate and enormous bandwidth, millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology has become one of the promising research sectors in both industry and academia. Owing to the advancements in 5G communication, traditional physical (PHY) layer-based solutions are becoming obsolete. Resource allocation, interference management, anti-blockage, and deafness are crucial problems needing resolution for designing modern mmWave communication network architectures. Consequently, comparatively new approaches such as medium access control (MAC) protocol-based utilization can help meet the advancement requirements. A MAC layer accesses channels and prepares the data frames for transmission to all connected devices, which is even more significant in very high frequency bands, i.e., in the mmWave spectrum. Moreover, different MAC protocols have their unique limitations and characteristics. In this survey, to deal with the above challenges and address the limitations revolving around the MAC layers of mmWave communication systems, we investigated the existing state-of-the-art MAC protocols, related surveys, and solutions available for mmWave frequency. Moreover, we performed a categorized qualitative comparison of the state-of-the-art protocols and finally examined the probable approaches to alleviate the critical challenges in future research.
随着连接设备数量的增加，为了让更多用户享受高速传输速率和巨大带宽，毫米波（mmWave）技术已成为工业界和学术界颇具前景的研究领域之一。由于5G通信的发展，传统的基于物理（PHY）层的解决方案正逐渐过时。资源分配、干扰管理、抗阻塞和聋点是设计现代毫米波通信网络架构时需要解决的关键问题。因此，诸如基于介质访问控制（MAC）协议的利用等相对较新的方法有助于满足发展需求。MAC层访问信道并准备数据帧以传输到所有连接设备，这在甚高频频段，即在毫米波频谱中更为重要。此外，不同的MAC协议有其独特的局限性和特点。在本次综述中，为应对上述挑战并解决围绕毫米波通信系统MAC层的局限性，我们研究了现有的毫米波频率的最新MAC协议、相关综述及可用解决方案。此外，我们对最新协议进行了分类定性比较，最后探讨了在未来研究中缓解关键挑战的可能方法。
