Feasibility Study of Providing Backward Compatibility with MPTCP to WiGig/IEEE 802.11ad

To make WiGig/IEEE 802.11ad backward compatible with the legacy Wi-Fi, a multi-band device that is capable of WiGig and Wi-Fi is necessarily equipped a function of fast switchover between the WiGig and Wi-Fi link. It is expected that the switching action is done as quickly as possible in order to minimize negative effects on an ongoing application. The IEEE 802.11ad standard defines the switching operation within the scope of fast session transfer (FST) protocol. To properly run FST, the device needs extra layer-2 entities that simultaneously manage the PHY/MAC states of multiple radios. Although introducing WiGig radios is a trivial task, installing those entities on an existing legacy Wi-Fi network is unfortunately a challenging one. This work presents an experimental feasibility study of achieving the backward compatibility without FST. We initially analyze the feasible capability of multipath transmission control protocol (MPTCP). We then setup a real- world testbed and evaluate different operational modes of MPTCP, aiming to find the most suitable one. Our experimental results show that the fast switchover between a multi-Gigabit WiGig and a legacy Wi-Fi link is achievable with the MPTCP's backup mode.