[STDS-802-11] HEW SG: Comments on draft PAR

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HEW folks,

You may have been there, or heard about, my questions during the closing plenary in Los Angeles about the draft PAR being put forward by the HEW SG. At the time, Bruce clarified that the agenda item at the time was to get the draft PAR into the process for review, and that my questions would be better asked during the review.

So, I am putting them forward here, now, instead of taking the time during that plenary session, in an interest in getting it clarified before/at the Beijing meeting.

1. I am wondering about the band restrictions. To quote from the draft PAR: “This amendment defines operations in frequency bands between 1 GHz and 6 GHz.” It was confirmed at the plenary that the intent is to not cover the TV white space bands. These leads me to two questions:

a. The PAR talks about making changes to both/either MAC and PHY. If the MAC is changed, how are those changed envisioned to be band-specific? This seems to me to be some combination of cumbersome in the text (a lot of added “If such-and-such MIB attribute is true” language around all of the changes), and complex and unnecessary restriction in implementations to only use the new features if the specified bands are in use.

b. If there are changes to the PHY, for example the 11ac PHY (which is specifically called out as focus for the improvements, per the PAR), will those changes not be reflected in the 11af PHY (which is currently an intentional “copy” of the 11ac PHY)? This again seems unnecessary and an unfortunate complication for implementations.

2. I also wonder about the language discussing mobility.

a. The PAR has this bullet: “Outdoor operation is limited to stationary and pedestrian speeds.” (In the section 5.2.b extended comments at the bottom – which is an excellent addition, by the way – this made the PAR one of the most clear about its intent in recent memory!) There seems to be no matching discussion of indoor operation while mobile.

b. Between the above sentence, and the specific mention of mobile devices as a target stakeholder, I am assuming that some aspect of mobility is being considered as part of the problem set of the scope. Although, I don’t see any other discussion that clarifies this. (As many of you know, I am very interested in mobility performance, and would like to understand if there is overlap or other relationship to the proposed work.) If mobility factors are to be considered, I believe more language describing that is needed in the PAR. If mobility is not going to be considered, I don’t understand the discussion of (outdoor) mobility speeds, and suggest that bullet be changed to say that mobility is not being considered.

Thanks for any clarification on these items.

Mark Hamilton

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