Enabling Sector Scheduling for 5G-CPE Dense Networks

Abstract

5G customer premise equipment (5G-CPE) is an IoT gateway technology that integrates 5G and Wi-Fi and therefore can provide Wi-Fi connection for IoT devices and meanwhile benefit from the advantages of 5G. With the increasing number of IoT devices, transmission collisions and hidden/exposed terminal problems on the Wi-Fi connection side become more and more serious. Conventional mechanisms cannot solve these problems well. In this paper, we propose a Wi-Fi sector (Wi-FiS) design, which is compatible with Wi-Fi, to solve them fundamentally. Wi-FiS divides the whole coverage area of Wi-Fi into multiple sectors and utilizes beamforming technology and sector-based scheduling to improve system performance of Wi-Fi dense networks. For a single-cell network, Wi-FiS differentiates uplink and downlink operations and totally excludes collision in downlink. For a multicell network, Wi-FiS can avoid hidden and exposed terminal problems, while enabling parallel transmissions among multiple cells. We then develop a theoretical model to analyze Wi-FiS’s throughput. Extensive simulations verify that our theoretical model is very accurate and Wi-FiS can improve system throughput of Wi-Fi dense networks significantly.