Millimeter-wave Evolution for 5G Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a comprehensive 5G cellular network architecture integrating mm-wave access with centralized control to achieve 1000 times higher system rates, supported by system-level simulations and current device/regulation status.

Contribution

It introduces a novel architecture combining mm-wave small cells with C-RAN for efficient 5G deployment, demonstrating potential to meet future traffic demands.

Findings

Achieves 1000x higher system rate in simulations

Effective seamless handover via C-RAN architecture

Feasibility supported by current mm-wave device and regulation status

Abstract

Triggered by the explosion of mobile traffic, 5G (5th Generation) cellular network requires evolution to increase the system rate 1000 times higher than the current systems in 10 years. Motivated by this common problem, there are several studies to integrate mm-wave access into current cellular networks as multi-band heterogeneous networks to exploit the ultra-wideband aspect of the mm-wave band. The authors of this paper have proposed comprehensive architecture of cellular networks with mm-wave access, where mm-wave small cell basestations and a conventional macro basestation are connected to Centralized-RAN (C-RAN) to effectively operate the system by enabling power efficient seamless handover as well as centralized resource control including dynamic cell structuring to match the limited coverage of mm-wave access with high traffic user locations via user-plane/control-plane splitting. In this paper, to prove the effectiveness of the proposed 5G cellular networks with mm-wave access, system level simulation is conducted by introducing an expected future traffic model, a measurement based mm-wave propagation model, and a centralized cell association algorithm by exploiting the C-RAN architecture. The numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed network to realize 1000 times higher system rate than the current network in 10 years which is not achieved by the small cells using commonly considered 3.5 GHz band. Furthermore, the paper also gives latest status of mm-wave devices and regulations to show the feasibility of using mm-wave in the 5G systems.