On the Real Experimentation and Simulation Models for Millimeter-Wave

Abstract

The emergence of millimeter-wave based technologies is pushing the deployment of the 5th generation of mobile communications (5G), on the potential to achieve multi-gigabit and low-latency wireless links. Part of this breakthrough was only possible with the introduction of small antenna arrays, capable to form highly directional and electronically steerable beams. This strategy allowed the overcoming of some drawbacks, but with a higher price: the re-design of the lower layers by introducing beamforming techniques. The impact of these changes is not well studied on the higher layers, in the most recent stacks (IEEE 802.11ad, 3GPP). Thus, the study of real deployments and the use of accurate network simulators play a key role, by enabling the test of complex large-scale scenarios. This article presents a key component missing in the simulation of mmWave networks, a blockage model. To the best of our knowledge, this is first blockage model that emulates the effects of obstacles in the mmWave links. Additionally, a codebook generation of a phased antenna array, with the Quasi-Deterministic (Q-D) channel model is also presented. All models are tested and compared with an outdoor mmWave network using the IEEE 802.11ad standard. The simulated and the real-life tests show similar results, with an average error for the worst case of 2.43% (index ranges) and 4.51% (distance), and to an average standard deviation of about 1.33dBm and 2.26dBm.