IEEE 802.11bf DMG Sensing: Enabling High-Resolution mmWave Wi-Fi Sensing
Steve Blandino, Tanguy Ropitault, Claudio R. C. M. da Silva, Anirudha Sahoo, Nada Golmie
Abstract
IEEE 802.11bf amendment is defining the wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) sensing procedure, which supports sensing in license-exempt frequency bands below 7 GHz, and the Directional Multi-Gigabit (DMG) sensing procedure for license-exempt frequency bands above 45 GHz. In this paper, we examine the use of Millimeter-Wave (mmWave) Wi-Fi to enable high-resolution sensing. We first provide an introduction to the principle of sensing and the modifications defined by the IEEE 802.11bf amendment to IEEE 802.11 to enable mmWave Wi-Fi sensing. We then present a new open-source framework that we develop to enable the evaluation of the DMG sensing procedure accuracy. We finally quantify the performance of the DMG sensing in terms of the velocity/angle estimate accuracy, and its overhead on the communication link. Results show that the DMG sensing procedure defined in IEEE 802.11bf is flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of sensing applications. For the bistatic scenario considered, the velocity accuracy is in the interval 0.1 m/s to 0.4 m/s, while the angular accuracy is between 1 degree and 8 degrees depending on the sensing parameters used. Ultimately, the overhead introduced by sensing is limited with a sensing overhead below 5.5% of the system symbol rate.