Physical layer design and performance analysis on multi-Gbps millimeter-wave WLAN system

60 GHz millimeter wave technology has become an attractive solution for wireless communication in the most recent market. In the draft of IEEE 802.11ad standard, two modulation schemes are being considered in the design of physical (PHY) layer, namely, Single-Carrier (SC), and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). In this paper, the error performances of both coded modulation schemes under different channel models with hardware impairment are investigated. This hardware impairment includes non-linear distortion induced by 60 GHz power amplifier (PA) and phase noise of 60 GHz Phased Locked Loop (PLL) circuit. The channel models include Line-of-Sight (LOS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conference room models. Simulation results demonstrate that OFDM requires a much higher back-off power than SC to achieve the system requirement. In a realistic 60GHz channel based on measurements provided by 802.11ad, OFDM has gained better performance than SC with hardware impairment under NLOS situation using directional antennae.