mm-View: Obtaining Real-Time Lower Layer Information of Commercial Off-The-Shelf 60 GHz Hardware

Abstract

The lower layer characteristics of 60 GHz wireless networks impact the entire protocol stack. This includes effects such as sudden link failure due to blockage, high packet loss due to deafness, or suboptimal transmit rates due to antenna misalignment. To understand the resulting behaviors at the upper layers, it is key to have access to lower layer information. At the time of writing, 60 GHz experimentation hardware is either limited in terms of bandwidth, real-time capability, or does not support a full stack. In contrast, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware covers all of the above features but is a black box regarding the lower layers. Our demo exploits hidden monitoring capabilities of a certain COTS device which has become popular in the 60 GHz research community. The demo allows conference attendees to interact with 60 GHz links and observe how this impacts lower layer parameters. Moreover, the demo shows how such interactions relate to the performance at the upper layers.