Sectors, Beams and Environmental Impact on the Performance of Commercial 5G mmWave Cells: an Empirical Study

TL;DR

This empirical study investigates the real-world performance of a commercial 5G mmWave cell, analyzing coverage, signal quality, and environmental effects, providing insights beyond simulations.

Contribution

It is the first to report on actual deployment performance of 5G mmWave in real-world conditions, comparing measurements with standard channel models.

Findings

Measured coverage and performance vary with environmental factors.

Identified gaps between real-world data and simulation models.

Environmental effects significantly impact mmWave signal quality.

Abstract

While the performance of mmWave links has been thoroughly investigated by simulations or testbeds, the behavior of this technology in real-world commercial setups has not yet been thoroughly documented. In this paper, we address this gap and present the results of an empirical study to determine the actual performance of a commercial 5G mmWave cell through on-field measurements. We evaluate the signal and beam coverage map of an operational network as well as the end-to-end communication performance of a 5G mmWave connection, considering various scenarios, including human body blockage effects, foliage-caused and rain-induced attenuation, and water surface effects. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to report on a commercial deployment while not treating the radio as a black box. Measurement results are compared with 3GPP's statistical channel models for mmWave to check the possible gaps between simulated and actual performance. This measurement analysis provides valuable information for researchers and 5G verticals to fully understand how a 5G mmWave commercial access network operates in real-world, under various operational conditions, with buildings, humans, trees, water surfaces, etc.