Stochastic Geometry Modeling and Analysis of Multi-Tier Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a realistic mathematical framework for analyzing multi-tier millimeter wave cellular networks, incorporating experimental data-driven path-loss and blockage models, and provides formulas for coverage and rate analysis.

Contribution

It presents a novel analytical approach considering realistic propagation and blockage models, applicable to multi-tier networks with beamforming and cell association strategies.

Findings

Dense millimeter wave networks outperform microwave networks in coverage and rate.

The noise-limited approximation is accurate for typical network densities.

The framework accommodates beamforming errors and multi-tier deployments.

Abstract

In this paper, a new mathematical framework to the analysis of millimeter wave cellular networks is introduced. Its peculiarity lies in considering realistic path-loss and blockage models, which are derived from recently reported experimental data. The path-loss model accounts for different distributions of line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight propagation conditions and the blockage model includes an outage state that provides a better representation of the outage possibilities of millimeter wave communications. By modeling the locations of the base stations as points of a Poisson point process and by relying on a noise-limited approximation for typical millimeter wave network deployments, simple and exact integral as well as approximated and closed-form formulas for computing the coverage probability and the average rate are obtained. With the aid of Monte Carlo simulations, the noise-limited approximation is shown to be sufficiently accurate for typical network densities. The proposed mathematical framework is applicable to cell association criteria based on the smallest path-loss and on the highest received power. It accounts for beamforming alignment errors and for multi-tier cellular network deployments. Numerical results confirm that sufficiently dense millimeter wave cellular networks are capable of outperforming micro wave cellular networks, both in terms of coverage probability and average rate.