January 2005 doc.:IEEE 802.11-05/1595r1

IEEE P802.11
Wireless LANs

[Minutes of High Throughput Task Group .11n Session]
Date: 2005-01-17
Author(s):
Name / Company / Address / Phone / email
Garth Hillman / Advanced Micro Devices / 5204 East Ben White
Austin TX 78741
MS: 625 / (512) 602-7869 /


Executive Summary (also see Chairs’ closing report doc. 11-05-0082r0):

1.  Qualcomm declared support for nSync Alliance and withdrawal of their complete proposal citing both proposals had similar features (support BF).

2.  Mitsubishi withdrew their support from the MitMot Alliance and declared their support for the nSync Alliance.

3.  Motorola declared that they would be the sole sponsor of the MitMot proposal and declared the name now stood for Mac and mImo Techniques for MOre Throughput.

4.  Updates to the three remaining proposals – nSync, WWiSE and MITMOT – were made; comparison presentations were made by proposers and non-proposers; significant written and oral Q&A time was provided.

5.  A down selection vote was conducted with the following result:

a.  nSync – 132 (55.32%)

b.  WWiSE – 84 (35.15%)

c.  MITMOT – 23 (9.62%)

The MITMOT proposal was thereby eliminated from further consideration at this time. Note that it could be reconsidered if a 75% confirmation vote is not achieved.

6.  Sheung Li from Atheros was elected as Vice-Chair.

7.  Nominations were opened for the technical editor. Election will take place at the March Plenary meeting.

8.  Informal meeting was held with .19 (coexistence); .11n will have to attach a Coexistence Assurance document with the initial LB draft supplement; the rules surrounding the .19 CA process were reviewed.

9.  Next meeting – March 14-18 in Atlanta; goals are to have a down selection vote and, if possible a confirmation vote and elect a technical editor.

Note: relative to presentations, these minutes are intended to offer a brief summary (including document number) of each of the presentations to facilitate review and recall without having to read each of the presentations. Most of the ‘presentation related’ minutes are built directly from selected slides of the various presentations and therefore are not subjective. An effort was made to note obscure acronyms.

The Q&A was particularly hard to capture and is subjective. Again this meeting Aryan Saed helped the secretary capture the essence of the Q&A. Please contact the secretary regarding errors and omissions.

1.  20 submissions were received and are listed in doc. 11-03-0891r3

2.  Four conference calls will be held before the January meeting

3.  Goal of January meeting will be to issue a “call for proposals”

Detailed cumulative minutes follow:

Monday, January 17, 2005; 4:00 PM – 9:30 PM [~ 212 attendees];

1  Meeting was called to order by Task Group chairperson elect Bruce Kraemer at 4:00 PM

2  Chairs’ Meeting Doc 11-04-1531r0

3  Chair read IEEE Patent Policy and recent interpretation by PAT COM

4  Chair reviewed topics not to be discussed during the meeting – licensing, pricing, litigation, market share

5  New participants in .11n ~= 20

6  Status update since SA Nov meeting

7  Motion by Jon Rosdahl to approve Nov minutes was seconded by Adrian Stephens passed without comment

8  Announcements

8.1  John Ketchum officially declared Qualcomm has joined the nSync Alliance

8.2  Jinyun Zhang officially declared Mitsubishi has joined the nSync Alliance

8.3  Marc de Courville officially declared Motorola would continue with the MitMot proposal which has been renamed Mac and mImo Techniques for MOre Throughput

9  Floor requested that freed up time be allocated to comparison presentations; chair agreed

10  Floor asked for clarification on why non-member names (e.g., MitMot) are being used to label presentations etc? Chair responded that those were the names of accepted alliances and special rules were not being used

11  Chair then proceeded to negotiate the Weeks’ Agenda for .11n and addressed the following topics:

11.1  Chair reviewed agenda logic agreed to at the San Antonio meeting

11.2  Chair presented an overview of the written questions

11.3  Chair reviewed options

11.3.1  Use Qualcomm freed up time for comparison presentations? Decision – comparison presentations

11.3.2  Should Wed Q&A be scheduled under special orders? Decision – no

11.3.3  Thursday Panel? Decision by Straw Poll – retain panel (41), sacrifice panel (63)

11.3.4  Should Thursday Down Selection vote be scheduled under special orders? Decision – yes at 1:30 PM

11.3.5  Chair asked if there was anyone who wanted the down selection vote to be a roll call vote (i.e., the votes are made public); someone from the floor said they would ask for a roll call vote.

11.3.6  A Straw Poll was held to determine if there was at least 25% support for a roll call vote with the result that 42 said yes (43%) and 55 said no (57%); The chair indicated the down selection vote would be a roll call vote

11.3.7  Comparison Presentations were grouped into those presented by non-proposer authors (4)

11.3.7.1  Field Measurements of 2x2 MIMO Communications, Babak Daneshrad, UCLA, 05-1627

11.3.7.2  TGn Consensus Proposal, HP & Infineon, 05-1625

11.3.7.3  Service Provider Requirements, Bellsouth & Qwest, 05-1644

11.3.7.4  Beamforming and MAC, Aryan Saed

11.3.7.4.1  Aryan Saed volunteered give his paper on Thursday after the down selection vote

11.3.8  Comparison Presentations were grouped into those presented proposer authors (10) which are:

11.3.8.1  Comparison of Value of proposed MAC features, Adrian Stephens, 05-1634

11.3.8.2  Closed vs Open Loop Comparisons, John Ketchum, 05-1630

11.3.8.3  1579 - ACI

11.3.8.4  1581 – Preamble Power Variations

11.3.8.5  1616 – WWiSE Pilot Performance

11.3.8.6  1645 – Preambles, Beam Forming for WWiSE

11.3.8.7  1590 – Legacy Effects of WWiSE Preambles

11.3.8.8  1636 – Pilot Tones

11.3.8.9  1635 – Preambles and MIMO Beam Forming – Sadowsky

11.3.8.10  05-006 – Backward Compatibility of CDD Preambles

11.3.8.11  Total available time = 4.5 hours so allowed length of time per presentation will be adjusted to the time available

11.4  In preparation for the Vice Chair election scheduled for 1:30 today the chair noted that the only announced candidate was Sheung Li and that the nominations were still open.

11.5  Following Agenda was approved:

12  Presentation: (11-04-1627); by Babak Daneshrad from UCLA; Field Measurements of 2x2 MIMO Communications; outline

12.1  Testbed Overview

12.2  Loss Due to IQ mismatch & phase noise (eye opener for research team)

12.3  Measurement Results (on 8x8 in 25 MHz of BW)

12.4  MIMO Decoder ASIC (6 mm per side)

12.5  Note: ‘common’ phase error (CPE) decreases with increasing FFT sizes and increasing MIMO configuration

12.6  Questions - none

13  Presentation: (11-04-1630r0) by Sanjiv Nanda from Qualcomm; Closed vs Open Loop Comparison

13.1  Quality and Benefits of Closed Loop

13.2  Throughput and Latency Comparison

13.3  Rate vs Range Curves

13.4  Conclusions

13.4.1  We have demonstrated throughput and latency benefits of closed loop feedback.

13.4.1.1  MIMO Mode feedback: Eigen-mode steering versus spatial spreading

13.4.1.2  Stream feedback: number of spatial streams

13.4.1.3  Rate feedback: rates per spatial stream

13.4.2  Significant benefits with very little overhead.

13.4.2.1  16 bits(?) at Data Rate

13.5  Questions from the floor

13.5.1  Did you do experiments to determine the sensitivity of results? A – yes but more work needs to be done

14  Chair recessed the session at 6:03 until 7:30 PM

15  Chair reconvened the meeting at 7:31 PM

16  Chair issued a final call for Vice Chair nominations and Harry Worstell nominated Art Astrin, a professor at San Jose State

17  Chair conducted the election:

17.1  Each candidate gave a brief speech (2 min) outlining their qualifications and reasons for running for election

17.2  It was verified that both candidates met the requirement of being a voting member of .11n

17.3  The candidates left the room for the vote

17.4  The open vote was held and the results were:

17.4.1  Sheung Li (Atheros) = 72

17.4.2  Art Astrin = 32

17.5  Chair introduced Sheung as the new Vice Chair of .11n

18  Comparison Presentation: 11-05-1625r2; 802.11n Consensus Proposal by Tim Wakeley

18.1  Proposed a .11n sub-committee to recommend a process to merge key differences

18.2  Possibly work on mandatory features first and then optional features

18.2.1  Examples include – aggregation, 20/40 MHz, preambles, coding scheme,

18.3  .11n scope is very broad and therefore a process is needed

18.4  Would a ‘line item veto’ be a bad process?

18.5  Chair noted some of these topics should be considered in setting the March agenda

18.6  Open to the floor for comments:

18.6.1  Logical suggestions

18.6.2  Good that members who are NOT affiliated with one or the other group get a voice in the decision

18.6.3  Two proposals are in fact already close together

18.6.4  Can’t get around the .11 process; let it work

18.6.5  75% is difficult to achieve

19  Chair took a moment to draw cards for the order of the 2 hour complete presentation updates starting Tuesday at 10:30 AM. The order turned out to be MitMot, WWiSE and TGnSync.

20  Comparison Presentation: 11-05-1644-00-00n, Service Provider Requirements for 802.11n; Brian Ford, Bell South

20.1  Gateways now include modem, router and AP

20.1.1  GPON = Gigabit Passive Optical Network

20.2  Use .11n to reduce need for truck roll and pulling wires in homes

20.3  Support VoIP; handsets will be dual – GSM and Wi-Fi!!!

20.4  Need customer satisfaction, QoS especially for voice, error free streaming data, PnP, security, 25 Mbps @ 150 Meter drop (as close as fiber must get to the home to be classified as fiber to the home) , Mobility - Doppler Effect, mesh, hand-off,

20.5  Impairments – 3 dB=sheet rock, 6 dB=floor, 9 dB=exterior wall

20.6  Customers prefer a single access point

20.7  Must have QoS – baseline = as good as existing services

20.8  Encryption – need to encrypt content to satisfy Hollywood

20.9  Create device types categorized by packet size capability

20.10  For video conferencing don’t have the luxury of buffering

20.11  VoIP is probably the hardest

21  Comparison Presentation: 11-04-1579r1, Adjacent Channel Interference and Filtering for 56 Carrier Signals; Dave Hedberg, Conexant

21.1  The sharper filter required for 56 carriers results in a 27 tap filter (vs 19 for 52 carriers)

21.2  Conclusion:

21.2.1  ACI performance and filter complexity are not significantly different

21.2.2  The added dispersion due to the required narrower filter transition band for 56-carriers does not significantly impact PER performance with TGn channels

21.3  Questions - none

22  Chair rationalized with members the order of the remaining comparison presentations

22.1  Chris Hansen and John Sadowsky volunteered to make their presentations on Wednesday starting at 1:30

22.2  Cards were drawn to establish the order of the 6 remaining comparison proposals starting Tuesday morning at 8:00 AM

23  No further business so chair recessed the meeting at 9:25 PM until 8:00 AM tomorrow morning

Tuesday 1-18-05; 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM

1  Chair called the meeting to order at 8:01 AM

2  Comparison Presentations by Proposers; 11-05-1634r0, Technical Comparison of the value of proposed MAC features; Adrian Stephens, Intel

2.1  Expectations of a good MAC defined

2.1.1  Balanced perf of phy and MAC

2.1.2  Balanced Complexity

2.1.3  Scaleable and extensible

2.1.4  Meet the needs of Usage models

2.1.5  Exceed proprietary solutions

2.1.6  Interoperable with legacy products

2.2  Benefits of TGnsync

2.2.1  Aggregation

2.2.2  Reverse Direction data

2.2.3  MRMRA – multiple responder multiple receiver aggregation

2.2.4  RX assisted link adaptation

2.3  Comparison with WWiSE

2.3.1  No reverse Direction Data

2.3.2  No MRMRA

2.3.3  With saturated load nSync throughput exceeds WWiSE throughput

2.4  Questions

2.4.1  How does recovery happen if channel fails? A – 3-way handshake

2.4.2  TGe MAC already complex enough? A – TGe never had a timely protocol

3  Comparison Presentations by Proposers; 11-05-0006r1, Backward Compatibility of CDD Preambles; Darren McNamara, Toshiba

3.1  Statement of Problem – both nSync and WWiSE use the CDD technique

3.1.1  CDD – Cyclic Delay Diversity

3.1.2  WWiSE is not fully backward compatible since some legacy devices use auto-correlation and others use cross-correlation; decoding WWISE signal field using WWiSE preamble is problematic for legacy receivers based on cross-correlation

3.1.3  nSync more robust as measured in the lab

3.2  Questions – none

4  Comparison Presentations by Proposers; 11-05-1581r1, Power Variations with WWiSE Cyclic Preamble Structure; Dave Hedberg, Conexant

4.1  Concludes that power variation is well behaved for the WWiSE Preamble and resulted in robust detection

4.1.1  Variation in dynamic range was relatively small with associated minimal degradation in performance

4.1.2  Purpose of mixed mode STS is only for legacy detection

4.1.3  Laboratory testing has been done

4.1.3.1  STS – Short Training Sequence

4.1.3.2  LTS – Long Training Sequence

4.1.3.3  SF – signal field

4.2  Questions – Slide 14, ch E, do you need an extra bit in the ADC? A - no

5  Comparison Presentations by Proposers; 11-05-1616r1,WWiSE Pilot Scheme Performance; Airgo Networks; Allert van Zelst

5.1  Showed that the WWiSE pilot scheme outperformed the legacy .11a pilot scheme while having the same tracking bandwidth (loss at most .5 dB)

5.1.1  One of the best metric – post processing SNR of the pilot processing

5.1.2  From a theoretical point of view it is true that the MIMO 2 pilots out performs SISO 4 pilot case

5.2  Questions – none

6  Comparison Presentations by Proposers; 11-05-1636r1, Impact of Fewer Pilot Tones on .11n PHY Performance; Won-Joon Choi, Atheros

6.1  Simulation conditions=CC67

6.2  Config = 2x2

6.3  Don’t just compare to .11a but also consider:

6.3.1  Timing

6.3.2  Frequency Offset

6.3.3  Channel Estimation

6.3.4  Decoded SNR

6.3.5  Pilot/Phase Tracking accuracy

6.4  Concludes: using only 2 tones to gain <4% throughput has detrimental effects of about 1 dB in PER; also, if one pilot is lost (e.g., narrow band interference from BT) results can be very significant – 6 dB PER