Neighbor discovery in 60 GHz wireless personal area networks

60 GHz radio is a promising technology which can handle the data rate of the order of gigabits-per-second. Hence, it is an attractive candidate for wireless personal area networks (WPANs). Due to the high path loss, directional antennas are recommended for use in 60 GHz systems. To set-up directional communications, it is essential to obtain the knowledge of direction of the surrounding devices. However, a neighbor discovery process using directional antennas is nontrivial. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive investigation of using directional antenna for neighbor discovery process. We demonstrate the performance of neighbor discovery using different antenna modes combining different neighbor discovery mechanisms. Our results may aid in designing directional antennas for 60 GHz WPANs.