Millimeter wave (mmWave) links will offer high capacity but are poor at
penetrating into or diffracting around solid objects. Thus, we consider a
hybrid cellular network with traditional sub 6 GHz macrocells coexisting with
denser mmWave small cells, where a mobile user can connect to either
opportunistically. We develop a general analytical model to characterize and
derive the uplink and downlink cell association in view of the SINR and rate
coverage probabilities in such a mixed deployment. We offer extensive
validation of these analytical results (which rely on several simplifying
assumptions) with simulation results. Using the analytical results, different
decoupled uplink and downlink cell association strategies are investigated and
their superiority is shown compared to the traditional coupled approach.
Finally, small cell biasing in mmWave is studied, and we show that
unprecedented biasing values are desirable due to the wide bandwidth.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communication