Stochastic Modeling of Beam Management in mmWave Vehicular Networks

TL;DR

This paper develops a stochastic model for beam management in mmWave vehicular networks, providing analytical insights into handover events and guiding network parameter optimization for high-speed mobility support.

Contribution

It introduces the first comprehensive analysis of beam management beyond coverage and rate, focusing on handover and beam switching in vehicular scenarios.

Findings

Analytical expressions for average beam switching events

Insights for optimizing system parameters like feedback resources

Guidelines for network tuning in high-mobility environments

Abstract

Mobility management is a major challenge for the wide-spread deployment of millimeter-wave (mmWave) cellular networks. In particular, directional beamforming in mmWave devices renders high-speed mobility support very complex. This complexity, however, is not limited to system design but also the performance estimation and evaluation. Hence, some have turned their attention to stochastic modeling of mmWave vehicular communication to derive closed-form expressions characterizing the coverage and rate behavior of the network. In this article, we model and analyze the beam management for mmWave vehicular networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that goes beyond coverage and rate analysis. Specifically, we focus on a multi-lane divided highway scenario in which base stations and vehicles are present on both sides of the highway. In addition to providing analytical expressions for the average number of beam switching and handover events, we provide design insights for the network operators to fine-tune their network within the flexibility provided by the standard in the choice of system parameters, including the number of resources dedicated to channel feedback and beam alignment operations.