Abstract
In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of macrodiversity for millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular networks. The key issue with mmWave networks is that signals are prone to blocking by objects in the environment, which causes paths to go from line-of-sight (LOS) to non-LOS (NLOS). We identify macrodiversity as an important strategy for mitigating blocking, as with macrodiversity the user will attempt to connect with two or more base stations. Diversity is achieved because if the closest base station is blocked, then the next base station might still be unblocked. However, since it is possible for a single blockage to simultaneously block the paths to two base stations, the issue of correlated blocking must be taken into account by the analysis. Our analysis characterizes the macrodiverity gain in the presence of correlated random blocking and interference. To do so, we develop a framework to determine distributions for the LOS probability, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), and Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) by taking into account correlated blocking. We validate our framework by comparing our analysis, which models blockages using a random point process, with an analysis that uses real-world data to account for blockage. We consider a cellular uplink with both diversity combining and selection combining schemes. We also study the impact of blockage size and blockage density along with the effect of co-channel interference arising from other cells. We show that the assumption of independent blocking can lead to an incorrect evaluation of macrodiversity gain, as the correlation tends to decrease macrodiversity gain.
Highlights
Millimeter-wave has emerged in recent years as a viable candidate for infrastructure-based systems [1,2,3,4,5]
To mitigate the issue of blocking in millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular networks, macrodiversity has emerged as a promising solution, where the user attempts to connect to multiple base stations [12]
We have proposed a framework to analyze the second-order macrodiversity gain for an mmWave cellular system in the presence of correlated blocking
Summary
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) has emerged in recent years as a viable candidate for infrastructure-based (i.e., cellular) systems [1,2,3,4,5]. Prior work has considered the SINR distribution of mmWave personal networks [16,17,21]. The issue of blockage correlation was considered in [22,23,24,25], but it was in the context of a localization application where the goal was to ensure that a minimum number of positioning transmitters were visible by the receiver As such, this prior work was only concerned with the number of unblocked transmissions rather than the distribution of the received aggregate signal (i.e., source or interference power).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
