10
Remaining Challenges and Future Directions
This book has presented a thorough overview of fundamental elements of 60 GHz technology, covering key layers of the communication protocol stack, from channel modeling to medium access control. Current research and development results have also been presented to illustrate the evolving nature of this technology. With two completed standards, multiple industry consortia and the first products to enter the market, 60 GHz has firmly established itself as the next major trend in gigabit wireless technology. Nevertheless, as is apparent from the contents of this book, new challenges have arisen at every layer of the communication protocol, which require a significant degree of innovation to be overcome. Moreover, beyond technical advancements at particular layers, a successful 60 GHz solution (technically and economically) will need to address all aspects of the system design simultaneously.
Some of the most important challenges remaining and anticipated developments are as follows.
Full system evaluation in end-user scenarios. As seen in Chapters 7 and 8, the implementation of a full 60 GHz demonstrator from radio to baseband is a challenging task from many perspectives. Despite the availability of such prototypes, to perform full system-level evaluations and measurements over different circumstances (channel conditions, reflections, interferences, etc.) is also a difficult ...
