A Robust Relay Placement Framework for 60GHz mmWave Wireless Personal Area Networks

Multimedia streaming applications with stringent QoS requirements in 60GHz mmWave wireless personal area networks (WPANs) demand high rate and low latency data transfer as well as low service disruption. In this paper, we consider the problem of robust relay placement in 60GHz WPANs. Relays forward traffic from transmitter devices to receiver devices facilitating i) the primary communication path for non-line-of-sight (NLOS) transceiver pairs, and ii) secondary (backup) communication path for line-of-sight (LOS) transceiver pairs. We formulate the robust minimum relay placement problem and the robust maximum utility relay placement problem with the objective to minimize the number of relays deployed and maximize the network utility, respectively. Efficient algorithms are developed to solve both problems and have been shown to incur less service disruption in presence of moving subjects that may block the LOS paths in the environment.