mmWave Beam Steering via Visible Light Sensing

Abstract

Wireless communication in mmWave bands with wide bandwidths and directional links is crucial for high data rate demands of future networks. A key challenge in mmWave networking is maintaining beam alignment under device mobility such as rotation or translation. We present LiSteer, a novel system which acquires and steers mmWave beams at mobile devices by repurposing indicator LEDs on wireless Access Points (APs) to passively acquire direction estimates using off-the-shelf light sensors, and demonstrate that LiSteer maintains beam alignment at the narrowest beamwidth level even in case of device mobility, without incurring any training overhead at mobile devices. Our extensive evaluation on custom hardware and simulation platforms shows LiSteer achieves direction estimates within 2.5 degrees of ground truth on average, and achieves beam steering accuracy of more than 97% while in tracking mode.