Effect of Correlated Building Blockages on the Ergodic Capacity of mmWave Systems in Urban Scenarios

TL;DR

This paper investigates how correlated building blockages in urban environments impact the ergodic capacity of mmWave communication systems, providing analytical insights validated with real city data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of blockage correlation effects on ergodic capacity in urban mmWave systems, supported by realistic city modeling.

Findings

Correlation among blockages significantly affects capacity estimates.

Analytical expressions are validated with Chicago city building data.

Results highlight importance of considering blockage correlation in system design.

Abstract

The mmWave bands, considered to support the forthcoming generation of mobile communications technologies, have a well-known vulnerability to blockages. Recent works in the literature analyze the blockage probability considering independence or correlation among the blocking elements of the different links. In this letter, we characterize the effect of blockages and their correlation on the ergodic capacity. We carry out the analysis for urban scenarios, where the considered blocking elements are buildings that are primarily parallel to the streets. We also present numerical simulations based on actual building features of the city of Chicago to validate the obtained expressions.