A Millimeter Wave Network for Billions of Things

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of new connected devices will come online, placing a huge strain on today's Wi-Fi and cellular spectrum. This problem will be further exacerbated by the fact that many of these IoT devices are low-power devices that use low-rate modulation schemes and therefore do not use the spectrum efficiently. Millimeter wave (mmWave) technology promises to revolutionize wireless networks and solve the spectrum shortage problem through the usage of massive chunks of high-frequency spectrum. However, existing mmWave networks are power-hungry and expensive, which make them unsuitable for low-power, low-cost IoT devices. In this paper, we present mmX, a system which significantly reduces cost and power consumption of a mmWave network, enabling its use in IoT applications.