2 research outputs found
Performance Analysis of Indoor mmWave Networks with Ceiling-Mounted Access Points
The objective of the Enhanced Mobile Broadband use case in 5G networks is to
deliver high capacity access to densely populated areas, like city centres,
transportation hubs or convention centres. Millimetre-wave communications are
the go-to technology to realise that objective, yet due to weak
outdoor-to-indoor penetration, outdoor deployments will not suffice and
dedicated indoor deployments will be necessary. In this article, we study dense
deployments of millimetre-wave access points mounted on the ceiling, with
directional antennas pointing downwards to illuminate selected spots on the
ground. In this setup, the signal propagation is primarily limited by human
body blockages. Therefore, we develop a body blockage model and derive an
expression for the probability of blockage. Using the developed expressions and
our simulation framework, we assess the impact of densification and body
blockage on the achievable performance. We find that both coverage and area
spectral efficiency curves exhibit non-trivial behaviour with respect to the
access point density and that there is an optimal beamwidth-density
configuration that only maximises either coverage or area spectral efficiency.
Such optimal configuration changes depending on the body blockage probability,
leading to a necessity for network designers to carefully consider their
intended application and scenario.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, accepted in IEEE Transactions of Mobile
Computing journa
Performance Evaluation of Scheduling in 5G-mmWave Networks under Human Blockage
The millimetre-wave spectrum provisions enormous enhancement to the
achievable data rate of 5G networks. However, human blockages affecting the
millimetre-wave signal can severely degrade the performance if proper resource
allocation is not considered. In this paper, we assess how conventional
schedulers, such as the Proportional Fair scheduler, react to the presence of
blockage. Our results show that the resource allocation may disfavour users
suffering from blockage, leading to low data rate for those users. To
circumvent this problem, we show that the data rate of those users can be
improved by using a scheduler adapted to react to upcoming blockage events. The
adapted scheduler aims at proactively allocating the resources before a
blockage happens, mitigating losses. Such adaptation is motivated by recent
progress in blockage prediction for millimetre-wave signals in a dynamic human
blockage scenario. Our extensive simulations indicate gains in the 1st
percentile rate and fairness with respect to Proportional Fair scheduler when
blockage conditions are severe.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Systems Journal, 8 pages, 6 figure