Throughput Comparison of Multi-Gbps WPAN (IEEE 802.15.3c) PHY Layer Designs under Non-Linear 60-GHz Power Amplifier

The millimeter-wave 60-GHz wireless personal area network (WPAN) is being standardized by the IEEE 802.15 Alternative PHY Task Group 3c (IEEE 802.15.3c). The physical (PHY) layer design targets data rates of multi-giga bits per second (multi-Gbps). In this paper, two physical (PHY) layer designs based on single-carrier frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) were compared in packet error rate (PER) and throughput. The performance evaluation and comparison were conducted with the non-linear distortion, induced by the 60-GHz power amplifier (PA), taken into account. It was shown that the PHY layer design based on SC-FDE has much better PER performance and higher throughput than the one based on OFDM. The SC-FDE based PHY layer design exhibits itself as a strong candidate for the 60-GHz WPAN (IEEE 802.15.3c) standard.