State-of-the-art and research challenges for consumer wireless communications at 60 GHz

The demand on performance of wireless networks is constantly increasing. To date, conventional sub 6 gigahertz (GHz) bands were able to keep up with the requirements through continuous spectral efficiency improvements. Consequently, advancing this area further became exceptionally costly. Therefore, despite the industry resistance towards changing the already established communications spectrum and unavailability of sufficient number of suitable frequency bands for typical communication purposes, carrier frequency, hence operation bandwidth, increase method is chosen as an alternative. In this paper, the first spectrum chosen for utilization, the 60 GHz band, is surveyed. Detailed explanations of the standards and their processes are provided, in addition to the characteristics of the channel and 60 GHz technologies, devices and consumer applications. As its initial standards are already complete and widespread communications usage expected to start in 2016, the 60 GHz band is a genuine candidate for the next generation of mass market wireless communication systems1.