Investigation of Future 5G-IoT Millimeter-Wave Network Performance at 38 GHz for Urban Microcell Outdoor Environment

Abstract

The advent of fifth-generation (5G) systems and their mechanics have introduced an unconventional frequency spectrum of high bandwidth with most falling under the millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum. The benefit of adopting these bands of the frequency spectrum is two-fold. First, most of these bands appear to be unutilized and they are free, thus suggesting the absence of interference from other technologies. Second, the availability of a larger bandwidth offers higher data rates for all users, as there are higher numbers of users who are connected in a small geographical area, which is also stated as the Internet of Things (IoT). Nevertheless, high-frequency band poses several challenges in terms of coverage area limitations, signal attenuation, path and penetration losses, as well as scattering. Additionally, mmWave signal bands are susceptible to blockage from buildings and other structures, particularly in higher-density urban areas. Identifying the channel performance at a given frequency is indeed necessary to optimize communication efficiency between the transmitter and receiver. Therefore, this paper investigated the potential ability of mmWave path loss models, such as floating intercept (FI) and close-in (CI), based on real measurements gathered from urban microcell outdoor environments at 38 GHz conducted at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur campus. The measurement data were obtained by using a narrow band mmWave channel sounder equipped with a steerable direction horn antenna. It investigated the potential of the network for outdoor scenarios of line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) with both schemes of co- (vertical-vertical) and cross (vertical-horizontal) polarization. The parameters were selected to reflect the performance and the variances with other schemes, such as average users cell throughput, throughput of users that are at cell-edges, fairness index, and spectral efficiency. The outcomes were examined for various antenna configurations as well as at different channel bandwidths to prove the enhancement of overall network performance. This work showed that the CI path loss model predicted greater network performance for the LOS condition, and also estimated significant outcomes for the NLOS environment. The outputs proved that the FI path loss model, particularly for V-V antenna polarization, gave system simulation results that were unsuitable for the NLOS scenario.