System design issues in dense urban millimeter wave cellular networks

Upcoming deployments of cellular networks will see an increasing use of millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies, roughly between 20-100 GHz. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate some key design issues in dense urban mmWave cellular networks by developing mathematical models that are representative of these networks. In the first contribution, stochastic geometry (SG) is used to study the per user rate performance of multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) in downlink mmWave cellular network incorporating the impact of a spatially sparse blockage dependent multipath channel and hybrid precoding. Performance of MU-MIMO is then compared with single-user beamforming and spatial multiplexing in different network scenarios considering coverage, rate and power consumption tradeoffs to suggest when to use which MIMO scheme. The second contribution reconsiders a popular received signal power model used in system capacity analysis of MIMO wireless networks employing single user beamforming. A modification is suggested to the model by introducing a correction factor. An approximate analysis is done to justify incorporating such a factor and simulations are performed to validate it's importance. Although this contribution does not study a new system design issue for mmWave cellular, it highlights a shortcoming with using the popular received signal power model to study design issues in mmWave cellular networks. The third and fourth contributions investigate resource allocation in self-backhauled mmWave cellular networks. In order to enable affordable initial deployments of mmWave cellular, self-backhauling is envisioned as a cost-saving solution. The third contribution investigates how to divide resources between uplink and downlink for access and backhaul in self-backhauled networks with single hop wireless backhauling. The performance of dynamic time division duplexing (TDD) and integrated access-backhaul (IAB) is compared with static TDD and orthogonal access backhaul (OAB) strategies using a SG based model. The last contribution of this dissertation addresses the following key question for self-backhauled networks. What is the maximum extended coverage area that a single fiber site can support using multi-hop relaying, while still achieving a minimum target per user data rate? The problem of maximizing minimum per user rates is studied considering a series of deployments with a single fiber site and varying number of relays. Several design guidelines for multi-hop mmWave cellular networks are provided based on the analytical and empirical results.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

D6.3 Intermediate system evaluation results

The overall purpose of METIS is to develop a 5G system concept that fulfil s the requirements of the beyond-2020 connected information society and to extend today’s wireless communication systems for new usage cases. First, in this deliverable an updated view on the overall METIS 5G system concept is presented. Thereafter, simulation results for the most promising technology components supporting the METIS 5G system concept are reported. Finally, s imulation results are presented for one relevant aspect of each Horizontal Topic: Direct Device - to - Device Communication, Massive Machine Communication, Moving Networks, Ultra - Dense Networks, and Ultra - Reliable Communication.Popovski, P.; Mange, G.; Fertl, P.; Gozálvez - Serrano, D.; Droste, H.; Bayer, N.; Roos, A.... (2014). D6.3 Intermediate system evaluation results. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/7676

Interference management for moving networks in ultra-dense urban scenarios

The number of users relying on broadband wireless connectivity while riding public transportation vehicles is increasing significantly. One of the promising solutions is to deploy moving base stations on public transportation vehicles to form moving networks (MNs) that serve these vehicular users inside the vehicles. In this study, we investigated the benefits and challenges in deploying MNs in ultra-dense urban scenarios. We identified that the key challenge limiting the performance of MNs in ultra-dense urban scenarios is inter-cell interference, which is exacerbated by the urban canyon effects. To address this challenge, we evaluated different inter-cell interference coordination and multi-antenna interference suppression techniques for MNs. We showed that in using MNs together with effective interference management approaches, the quality of service for users in vehicles can be significantly improved, with negligible impacts on the performance of regular outdoor users

A Prospective Look: Key Enabling Technologies, Applications and Open Research Topics in 6G Networks

The fifth generation (5G) mobile networks are envisaged to enable a plethora of breakthrough advancements in wireless technologies, providing support of a diverse set of services over a single platform. While the deployment of 5G systems is scaling up globally, it is time to look ahead for beyond 5G systems. This is driven by the emerging societal trends, calling for fully automated systems and intelligent services supported by extended reality and haptics communications. To accommodate the stringent requirements of their prospective applications, which are data-driven and defined by extremely low-latency, ultra-reliable, fast and seamless wireless connectivity, research initiatives are currently focusing on a progressive roadmap towards the sixth generation (6G) networks. In this article, we shed light on some of the major enabling technologies for 6G, which are expected to revolutionize the fundamental architectures of cellular networks and provide multiple homogeneous artificial intelligence-empowered services, including distributed communications, control, computing, sensing, and energy, from its core to its end nodes. Particularly, this paper aims to answer several 6G framework related questions: What are the driving forces for the development of 6G? How will the enabling technologies of 6G differ from those in 5G? What kind of applications and interactions will they support which would not be supported by 5G? We address these questions by presenting a profound study of the 6G vision and outlining five of its disruptive technologies, i.e., terahertz communications, programmable metasurfaces, drone-based communications, backscatter communications and tactile internet, as well as their potential applications. Then, by leveraging the state-of-the-art literature surveyed for each technology, we discuss their requirements, key challenges, and open research problems

A prospective look: key enabling technologies, applications and open research topics in 6G networks

The fifth generation (5G) mobile networks are envisaged to enable a plethora of breakthrough advancements in wireless technologies, providing support of a diverse set of services over a single platform. While the deployment of 5G systems is scaling up globally, it is time to look ahead for beyond 5G systems. This is mainly driven by the emerging societal trends, calling for fully automated systems and intelligent services supported by extended reality and haptics communications. To accommodate the stringent requirements of their prospective applications, which are data-driven and defined by extremely low-latency, ultra-reliable, fast and seamless wireless connectivity, research initiatives are currently focusing on a progressive roadmap towards the sixth generation (6G) networks, which are expected to bring transformative changes to this premise. In this article, we shed light on some of the major enabling technologies for 6G, which are expected to revolutionize the fundamental architectures of cellular networks and provide multiple homogeneous artificial intelligence-empowered services, including distributed communications, control, computing, sensing, and energy, from its core to its end nodes. In particular, the present paper aims to answer several 6G framework related questions: What are the driving forces for the development of 6G? How will the enabling technologies of 6G differ from those in 5G? What kind of applications and interactions will they support which would not be supported by 5G? We address these questions by presenting a comprehensive study of the 6G vision and outlining seven of its disruptive technologies, i.e., mmWave communications, terahertz communications, optical wireless communications, programmable metasurfaces, drone-based communications, backscatter communications and tactile internet, as well as their potential applications. Then, by leveraging the state-of-the-art literature surveyed for each technology, we discuss the associated requirements, key challenges, and open research problems. These discussions are thereafter used to open up the horizon for future research directions

Wireless Backhaul Architectures for 5G Networks

This thesis investigates innovative wireless backhaul deployment strategies for dense small cells. In particular, the work focuses on improving the resource utilisation, reliability and energy efficiency of future wireless backhaul networks by increasing and exploiting the flexibility of the network. The wireless backhaul configurations and topology management schemes proposed in this thesis consider a dense urban area scenario with static users as well as an ultra-dense outdoor small cell scenario with vehicular traffic (pedestrians, bus users and car users). Moreover, a diverse range of traffic types such as file transfer, ultra-high definition (UHD) on-demand and real-time video streaming are used. In the first part of this thesis, novel dynamic two-tier Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture is employed in backhaul network to facilitate complex network management tasks including multi-tenancy resource sharing and energy-aware topology management. The results show the proposed architecture can deliver efficient resource utilisation, and QoS guarantee. The second part of the thesis presents wireless backhaul architectures that serve ultra-dense outdoor small cells installed on street-level fixtures. The characteristics of vehicular communications including diverse mobility patterns and unevenly distributed traffic are investigated. The system-level performance of two key technologies for 5G backhaul are compared: massive MIMO backhaul using sub-6GHz band and millimetre (mm)-wave backhaul in the 71 – 76 GHz band. Finally, innovative wireless backhaul architectures delivered from street fibre cabinets for ultra-dense outdoor small cells with vehicular traffic is proposed, which can effectively minimise the need for additional sites, power and fibre infrastructure. Multi-hop backhaul configurations are presented in order to bring in an extra level of flexibility, and thus, improve the coverage of a street cabinet mm-wave backhaul network as well as distribute traffic loads