Analysis of Blockage Impact on Handover Rate for User with Mobility in 5G mm-Wave Cellular Network

Abstract

The fifth-generation (5G), now being developed for use in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands, would enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) for the Mobile User (MU) in the near future. Despite the advantages of using mm-wave communications that are attained through the large bandwidth available in this band, it suffers from high penetration loss and low diffraction, which causes very high attenuation of the signal in free space. The attenuation of the signal can also be due to the blockages, such as buildings, human presence, vehicles, etc. As a result, the signal propagation path could be interrupted by those blockages causing significant fluctuation in the handover (HO) rate. Thus, the foreseen mm-wave communication gains are achieved at the expense of varying HO rates. Therefore, the impact of blockages on the HO rate for user mobility is a crucial performance factor that needs to be analyzed and addressed in mm-wave cellular communication systems. This paper analyses the impact of static blockage on the HO rate for a MU in the 5G mm-wave cellular network. We began by obtaining the impact of blockage with a fixed location in the 2-D plane on the HO rate for a MU moving radially away from the mm-wave base station (BS) at a certain speed. Afterward, we considered the MU moving in a uniform angle with a certain speed in the mm-wave cellular network. The mm-wave BSs, in this study, have been assumed to be distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson Point Process (PPP). The results show that the blockage has a remarkable impact on the HO rate, depending significantly on its location, and MU’s direction and speed.