Millimeter-Wave in Milliseconds: Sliding Window Network Coding Outperforms Rateless Codes

Ultra-reliability and low-latency are pivotal requirements of the new generation of communication networks. Over the past years, to increase throughput, adaptive active antennas were introduced in advanced wireless communications, specifically in the domain of millimeter-wave (mmWave). Consequently, new lower-layer techniques were proposed to cope with the higher dimensional and electronic steerable beams. The transition from omni-directional to highly directional antennas presents a new type of wireless systems that deliver high bandwidth, but that are susceptible to high losses and high latency variation. Classical approaches cannot close the rising gap between high throughput and low delay in those advanced systems. In this work, we incorporate effective sliding window network coding solutions in mmWave communications. While legacy systems such as rateless codes improve delay, our results show that they do not provide low latency communications (LLC - below 10 ms), but fixed sliding window random linear network coding (RLNC), does. Moreover, adaptive sliding window RLNC obtains ultra-reliable LLC (URLLC - LLC with maximum delay below 10 ms with more than 99% probability).