Mobility may degrade the performance of next-generation vehicular networks operating at the millimeter-wave spectrum: frequent mis-alignment and blockages require repeated beam training and handover, and incur enormous overhead. Nevertheless, mobility induces temporal correlations in the communication beams and in blockage events. In this paper, an adaptive design of beam training, data transmission and handover is proposed, that learns and exploits these temporal correlations to reduce the beam training overhead and optimally trade-off throughput and power consumption. At each time-slot, the serving base station (BS) decides to perform either beam training, data communication, or handover when blockage is detected, under uncertainty in the system state. The decision problem is cast as a partially observable Markov decision process, and the goal is to maximize the throughput delivered to the UE, under an average power constraint. To address the high dimensional optimization, an approximate constrained point-based value iteration (C-PBVI) method is developed, which simultaneously optimizes the primal and dual functions to meet the power constraint. Numerical results demonstrate a good match between the analysis and a simulation based on 2D mobility and 3D analog beamforming via uniform planar arrays at both BSs and UE, and reveal that C-PBVI performs near-optimally, and outperforms a baseline scheme with periodic beam training by 38% in spectral efficiency. Motivated by the structure of the C-PBVI policy, two heuristics are proposed, that trade complexity with sub-optimality, and achieve only 4% and 15% loss in spectral efficiency.
This paper presents a novel spatially consistent approach for modeling line-of-sight (LOS) paths in vehicular networks. We use stochastic geometry to model transmitters, obstacles, and receivers located in three parallel lines, respectively. Their geometric interactions are leveraged to characterize the existence of LOS paths. Specifically, the proposed approach focuses on the role of obstacles in blocking one or more LOS paths, which has been overlooked in most statistical models for blockage. Under the proposed framework, we derive the probability that a typical vehicle is in LOS with respec…
Line-of-sight link blockages represent a key challenge for the reliability and latency of millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) communication networks. This paper proposes to leverage LiDAR sensory data to provide awareness about the communication environment and proactively predict dynamic link blockages before they happen. This allows the network to make proactive decisions for hand-off/beam switching which enhances its reliability and latency. We formulate the LiDAR-aided blockage prediction problem and present the first real-world demonstration for LiDAR-aided blockage prediction in…
Blocking is one of the most important challenges in exploiting millimeter-wave for fifth-generation (5G) cellular communication systems. Compared to blockages caused by buildings or terrains, human body blockage exhibits a higher complexity due to the mobility and dynamic statistics of humans. To support development of outdoor millimeter-wave cellular systems, in this paper we present a novel 3D physical model of human body blockage. Based on the proposed model, the impact of human body blockage on frame-based data transmission is discussed, with respect to the system specifications and enviro…
Mobility may degrade the performance of next-generation vehicular networks operating at the millimeter-wave spectrum: frequent loss of alignment and blockages require repeated beam training and handover, thus incurring huge overhead. In this paper, an adaptive and joint design of beam training, data transmission and handover is proposed, that exploits the mobility process of mobile users and the dynamics of blockages to optimally trade-off throughput and power consumption. At each time slot, the serving base station decides to perform either beam training, data communication, or handover when …
Millimeter wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz communication systems rely mainly on line-of-sight (LOS) links between the transmitters and receivers. The sensitivity of these high-frequency LOS links to blockages, however, challenges the reliability and latency requirements of these communication networks. In this paper, we propose to utilize radar sensors to provide sensing information about the surrounding environment and moving objects, and leverage this information to proactively predict future link blockages before they happen. This is motivated by the low cost of the radar sensors, their abi…
This paper investigates a novel research direction that leverages vision to help overcome the critical wireless communication challenges. In particular, this paper considers millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems, which are principal components of 5G and beyond. These systems face two important challenges: (i) the large training overhead associated with selecting the optimal beam and (ii) the reliability challenge due to the high sensitivity to link blockages. Interestingly, most of the devices that employ mmWave arrays will likely also use cameras, such as 5G phones, self-driving vehi…
Accurate channel modeling and simulation are indispensable for millimeter-wave wideband communication systems that employ electrically-steerable and narrow beam antenna arrays. Three important channel modeling components, spatial consistency, human blockage, and outdoor-to-indoor penetration loss, were proposed in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project Release 14 for mmWave communication system design. This paper presents NYUSIM 2.0, an improved channel simulator which can simulate spatially consistent channel realizations based on the existing drop-based channel simulator NYUSIM 1.6.1. A geom…
Mobility and blockage are two critical challenges in wireless transmission over millimeter-wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) bands. In this paper, we investigate network massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission for mmWave/THz downlink in the presence of mobility and blockage. Considering the mmWave/THz propagation characteristics, we first propose to apply per-beam synchronization for network massive MIMO to mitigate the channel Doppler and delay dispersion effects. Accordingly, we establish a transmission model. We then investigate network massive MIMO downlink transmission …
This paper presents 73 GHz human blockage measurements for a point-to-point link with a 5 m transmitter-receiver separation distance in an indoor environment, with a human that walked at a speed of approximately 1 m/s at a perpendicular orientation to the line between the transmitter and receiver, at various distances between them. The experiment measures the shadowing effect of a moving human body when using directional antennas at the transmitter and receiver for millimeter-wave radio communications. The measurements were conducted using a 500 Megachips-per-second wideband correlator channel…
Blockage by the human hand/body is an important impairment in realizing practical millimeter wave wireless systems. Prior works on blockage modeling are either based on theoretical studies of double knife edge diffraction or its modifications, high-frequency simulations of electromagnetic effects, or measurements with experimental millimeter wave prototypes. While such studies are useful, they do not capture the form-factor constraints of user equipments (UEs). In this work, we study the impact of hand/body blockage with a UE at $28$ GHz built on Qualcomm's millimeter wave modem, antenna modul…
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) offers high data rate and bandwidth for air-to-everything (A2X) communications including air-to-air, air-to-ground, and air-to-tower. MmWave communication in the A2X network is sensitive to buildings blockage effects. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework to define and characterise the connectivity for an aerial access point (AAP) by jointly using stochastic geometry and random shape theory. The buildings are modelled as a Boolean line-segment process with fixed height. The blocking area for an arbitrary building is derived and minimized by optimizing the a…
The radiation pattern of an antenna array depends on the excitation weights and the geometry of the array. Due to wind and atmospheric conditions, outdoor millimeter wave antenna elements are subject to full or partial blockages from a plethora of particles like dirt, salt, ice, and water droplets. Handheld devices are also subject to blockages from random finger placement and/or finger prints. These blockages cause absorption and scattering to the signal incident on the array, and change the array geometry. This distorts the far-field radiation pattern of the array leading to an increase in t…
There has been a growing interest in the commercialization of millimeter wave (mmW) technology as a part of the Fifth-Generation New Radio (5G-NR) wireless standardization efforts. In this direction, many sets of independent measurement campaigns show that wireless propagation at mmW carrier frequencies is only marginally worse than propagation at sub-6 GHz carrier frequencies for small-cell coverage --- one of the most important use-cases for 5G-NR. On the other hand, the biggest determinants of viability of mmW systems in practice are penetration and blockage of mmW signals through different…
The densely packed antennas of millimeter-Wave (mmWave) MIMO systems are often blocked by the rain, snow, dust and even by fingers, which will change the channel's characteristics and degrades the system's performance. In order to solve this problem, we propose a cross-entropy inspired antenna array diagnosis detection (CE-AAD) technique by exploiting the correlations of adjacent antennas, when blockages occur at the transmitter. Then, we extend the proposed CE-AAD algorithm to the case, where blockages occur at transmitter and receiver simultaneously. Our simulation results show that the prop…
In this paper, we study the performance of millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicular communications (VCs) using non-orthogonal multiple access scheme (NOMA) at road intersections, since there areas are more prone to accidents. We study the case when the intersection involves two perpendicular lanes, we then extend the study to an intersection with several lanes. The transmission occurs between a source, and two destinations. The transmission experiences interference originated from a set of vehicles that are distributed as a Poisson point process (PPP). Our analysis includes the effects of blockage f…
Multi-point detection of the full-scale environment is an important issue in autonomous driving. The state-of-the-art positioning technologies (such as RADAR and LIDAR) are incapable of real-time detection without line-of-sight. To address this issue, this paper presents a novel multi-point vehicular positioning technology via \emph{millimeter-wave} (mmWave) transmission that exploits multi-path reflection from a \emph{target vehicle} (TV) to a \emph{sensing vehicle} (SV), which enables the SV to fast capture both the shape and location information of the TV in \emph{non-line-of-sight} (NLoS) …
In this paper, we study the impact and the improvement of using cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access scheme (NOMA) on a millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicular network at intersection roads. The intersections consists of two perpendicular roads. The transmission occurs between a source, and two destinations nodes with a help of a relay. We assume that the interference comes from as set of vehicles that are distributed as a one dimensional homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP). We derive closed form outage probability expressions for cooperative NOMA, and compare them with cooperative orthog…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicular communica tion systems have the potential to improve traffic efficiency and safety. Lack of secure communication links, however, may lead to a formidable set of abuses and attacks. To secure communication links, a physical layer precoding technique for mmWave vehicular communication systems is proposed in this paper. The proposed technique exploits the large dimensional antenna arrays available at mmWave systems to produce direction dependent transmission. This results in coherent transmission to the legitimate receiver and artificial noise that jams eavesdro…
The ongoing commercial deployment of millimeter wave systems brings into focus a number of practical issues in form factor user equipment (UE) design. With wavelengths becoming smaller, antenna gain patterns becoming directional, and link budgets critically dependent on beamforming, it becomes imperative to use a number of antenna modules at different locations of the UE for good performance. While more antennas/modules can enhance beamforming array gains, it comes with the tradeoff of higher component cost, power consumption of the associated radio frequency circuitry, and a beam management o…
Rapidly fading channels caused by pedestrians in dense urban environments will have a significant impact on millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications systems that employ electrically-steerable and narrow beamwidth antenna arrays. A peer-to-peer (P2P) measurement campaign was conducted with 7-degree, 15-degree, and 60-degree half-power beamwidth (HPBW) antenna pairs at 73.5 GHz and with 1 GHz of RF null-to-null bandwidth in a heavily populated open square scenario in Brooklyn, New York, to study blockage events caused by typical pedestrian traffic. Antenna beamwidths that range approximately an o…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications systems are promising candidate to support extremely high data rate services in future wireless networks. MmWave communications exhibit high penetration loss (blockage) and require directional transmissions to compensate for severe channel attenuations and for high noise powers. When blockage occurs, there are at least two simple prominent options: 1) switching to the conventional microwave frequencies (fallback option) and 2) using an alternative non-blocked path (relay option). However, currently it is not clear under which conditions and network param…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicular communication systems will provide an abundance of bandwidth for the exchange of raw sensor data and support driver-assisted and safety-related functionalities. Lack of secure communication links, however, may lead to abuses and attacks that jeopardize the efficiency of transportation systems and the physical safety of drivers. In this paper, we propose two physical layer (PHY) security techniques for vehicular mmWave communication systems. The first technique uses multiple antennas with a single RF chain to transmit information symbols to a target receiver a…
A critical challenge for wireless communications in the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands is blockage. MmWave signals suffer significant penetration losses from many common materials and objects, and small changes in the position of obstacles in the environment can cause large variations in the channel quality. This paper provides a measurement-based study of the effects of human blockage on an end-to-end application over a mmWave cellular link. A phased array system is used to measure the channel in multiple directions almost simultaneously in a realistic indoor scenario. The measurements are in…
Unlocking the full potential of millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz wireless communication networks hinges on realizing unprecedented low-latency and high-reliability requirements. The challenge in meeting those requirements lies partly in the sensitivity of signals in the millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz frequency ranges to blockages. One promising way to tackle that challenge is to help a wireless network develop a sense of its surrounding using machine learning. This paper attempts to do that by utilizing deep learning and computer vision. It proposes a novel solution that proactively predic…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) offers a cost effective solution to link blockage problem in mmWave communications, and the prerequisite of which is the accurate estimation of (1) the optimal beams for base station/access point (BS/AP) and mobile terminal (MT), (2) the optimal reflection patterns for IRSs, and (3) link blockage. In this paper, we carry out beam training design for IRSs assisted mmWave communications to estimate the aforementioned parameters. To acquire the optimal beams and reflection patterns, we firstly perform random beamforming and maximum likelihood estimation to est…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) technologies have the potential to achieve very high data rates, but suffer from intermittent connectivity. In this paper, we provision an architecture to integrate sub-6 GHz and mmWave technologies, where we incorporate the sub-6 GHz interface as a fallback data transfer mechanism to combat blockage and intermittent connectivity of the mmWave communications. To this end, we investigate the problem of scheduling data packets across the mmWave and sub-6 GHz interfaces such that the average delay of system is minimized. This problem can be formulated as Markov Decision P…
We develop an analytical framework to examine the line-of-sight (LOS) coverage area in vehicular networks with roadside units (RSU) and vehicle relays. In practical deployment scenarios, RSUs and vehicle relays are spatially correlated and we characterize this by employing Cox point processes to model the locations of RSUs and vehicle relays simultaneously. Leveraging the random blockage model, we model the LOS coverage area as Boolean models on these Cox point processes. The LOS coverage area is then evaluated by its area fraction. We show that relays can increase the area fraction of LOS cov…
Overcoming the link blockage challenges is essential for enhancing the reliability and latency of millimeter wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz) communication networks. Previous approaches relied mainly on either (i) multiple-connectivity, which under-utilizes the network resources, or on (ii) the use of out-of-band and non-RF sensors to predict link blockages, which is associated with increased cost and system complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel solution that relies only on in-band mmWave wireless measurements to proactively predict future dynamic line-of-sight (LOS) link bloc…
Millimeter wave wireless spectrum deployments will allow vehicular communications to share high data rate vehicular sensor data in real-time. The highly directional nature of wireless links in millimeter spectral bands will require continuous channel measurements to ensure the transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) beams are aligned to provide the best channel. Using real-world vehicular mmWave measurement data at 28 GHz, we determine the optimal beam sweeping period, i.e. the frequency of the channel measurements, to align the RX beams to the best channel directions for maximizing the vehicle-to-…
Due to its potential to support high data rates at low latency with reasonable interference isolation, millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications has emerged as a promising solution for wireless personal-area networks (WPAN) and an enabler for emerging applications such as high-resolution untethered virtual reality. At mmWave, signals are prone to blockage by objects in the environment, including human bodies. Most mmWave systems utilize directional antennas in order to overcome the significant path loss. In this paper, we consider the effects of blockage and antenna directivity on the performanc…
Future vehicular communication networks call for new solutions to support their capacity demands, by leveraging the potential of the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) spectrum. Mobility, in particular, poses severe challenges in their design, and as such shall be accounted for. A key question in mm-wave vehicular networks is how to optimize the trade-off between directive Data Transmission (DT) and directional Beam Training (BT), which enables it. In this paper, learning tools are investigated to optimize this trade-off. In the proposed scenario, a Base Station (BS) uses BT to establish a mm-wave dire…
Line-of-sight link blockages represent a key challenge for the reliability and latency of millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) communication networks. To address this challenge, this paper leverages mmWave and LiDAR sensory data to provide awareness about the communication environment and proactively predict dynamic link blockages before they occur. This allows the network to make proactive decisions for hand-off/beam switching, enhancing the network reliability and latency. More specifically, this paper addresses the following key questions: (i) Can we predict a line-of-sight link blo…
In this technical report (TR), we describe the mathematical model we developed to carry out a preliminary coverage and connectivity analysis in an automotive communication scenario based on mmWave links. The purpose is to exemplify some of the complex and interesting tradeoffs that have to be considered when designing solutions for mmWave automotive scenarios.
Multi-point vehicular positioning is one essential operation for autonomous vehicles. However, the state-of-the-art positioning technologies, relying on reflected signals from a target (i.e., RADAR and LIDAR), cannot work without line-of-sight. Besides, it takes significant time for environment scanning and object recognition with potential detection inaccuracy, especially in complex urban situations. Some recent fatal accidents involving autonomous vehicles further expose such limitations. In this paper, we aim at overcoming these limitations by proposing a novel relative positioning approach…
Enabling highly-mobile millimeter wave (mmWave) systems is challenging because of the huge training overhead associated with acquiring the channel knowledge or designing the narrow beams. Current mmWave beam training and channel estimation techniques do not normally make use of the prior beam training or channel estimation observations. Intuitively, though, the channel matrices are functions of the various elements of the environment. Learning these functions can dramatically reduce the training overhead needed to obtain the channel knowledge. In this paper, a novel solution that exploits mach…
The sensitivity of millimeter wave (mmWave) signals to blockages is a fundamental challenge for mobile mmWave communication systems. The sudden blockage of the line-of-sight (LOS) link between the base station and the mobile user normally leads to disconnecting the communication session, which highly impacts the system reliability. Further, reconnecting the user to another LOS base station incurs high beam training overhead and critical latency problems. In this paper, we leverage machine learning tools and propose a novel solution for these reliability and latency challenges in mmWave MIMO sy…
Future railway is expected to accommodate both train operation services and passenger broadband services. The millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology in providing multi-gigabit data rates to onboard users. However, mmWave communications suffer from severe propagation attenuation and vulnerability to blockage, which can be very challenging in high-speed railway (HSR) scenarios. In this paper, we investigate efficient hybrid beamforming (HBF) design for train-to-ground communications. First, we develop a two-stage HBF algorithm in blockage-free scenarios. In the first st…
The fundamental challenge of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band is the sensitivity of the radio channel to blockages, which gives rise to unstable connectivity and impacts the reliability of a system. To this end, multi-point connectivity is a promising approach for ensuring the desired rate and reliability requirements. A robust beamformer design is proposed to improve the communication reliability by exploiting the spatial macro-diversity and a pessimistic estimate of rates over potential link blockage combinations. Specifically, we provide a blockage-aware algorithm for the weighte…
In future wireless networks, one of the use-cases of interest is Internet-of-vehicles (IoV). Here, IoV refers to two different functionalities, namely, serving the in-vehicle users and supporting the connected-vehicle functionalities, where both can be well provided by the transceivers installed on top of vehicles. Such dual functionality of on-vehicle transceivers implies strict rate and reliability requirements, for which one may need to communicate at millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies. However, IoV communication at mmW requires up-to-date channel state information (CSI) and blockage avoidan…
With the explosive growth of mobile data, the demand of high-speed railway (HSR) passengers for broadband wireless access services urgently needs the support of ultra-highspeed scenario broadband wireless communication. Millimeterwave (mmWave) can achieve high data transmission rates, but it is accompanied by high propagation loss and vulnerability to blockage. To address this issue, developments of directional antennas and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) enhance the robustness of the mmWave train-ground communication system. In this paper, we propose a UAV and MRs relay assistance (UMRA) algo…
To support high data rate urgent or ad hoc communications, we consider mmWave UAV cellular networks and the associated challenges and solutions. To enable fast beamforming training and tracking, we first investigate a hierarchical structure of beamforming codebooks and design of hierarchical codebooks with different beam widths via the sub-array techniques. We next examine the Doppler effect as a result of UAV movement and find that the Doppler effect may not be catastrophic when high gain directional transmission is used. We further explore the use of millimeter wave spatial division multiple…
As driving becomes more automated, vehicles are being equipped with more sensors generating even higher data rates. Radars (RAdio Detection and Ranging) are used for object detection, visual cameras as virtual mirrors, and LIDARs (LIght Detection and Ranging) for generating high resolution depth associated range maps, all to enhance the safety and efficiency of driving. Connected vehicles can use wireless communication to exchange sensor data, allowing them to enlarge their sensing range and improve automated driving functions. Unfortunately, conventional technologies, such as dedicated short-…
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…
Blocking objects (blockages) between a transmitter and receiver cause wireless communication links to transition from line-of-sight (LOS) to non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation, which can greatly reduce the received power, particularly at higher frequencies such as millimeter wave (mmWave). We consider a cellular network in which a mobile user attempts to connect to two or more base stations (BSs) simultaneously, to increase the probability of at least one LOS link, which is a form of macrodiversity. We develop a framework for determining the LOS probability as a function of the number of BSs…
Modeling and Analysis of Sensing Assisted UAV Networks for Urban Vehicular Communications
Central Institute of Technology Kokrajhar（科克拉贾哈尔中央理工学院）；National Institute of Technology Calicut（卡利卡特国家技术学院）；Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（坎普尔印度理工学院）
Wireless communication in millimeter wave spectrum is poised to provide the latency and bandwidth needed for advanced use cases unfeasible at lower frequencies. Despite the market potential of vehicular communication networks, investigations into the millimeter wave vehicular channel are lacking. In this paper, we present a detailed overview of a novel 1 GHz wide, multi-antenna vehicle to vehicle directional channel sounding and measurement platform operating at 28 GHz. The channel sounder uses two 256-element phased arrays at the transmitter vehicle and four 64-element arrays at the receiver …
Characterization of the millimeter wave wireless channel is needed to facilitate fully connected vehicular communication in the future. To study the multipath-rich, rapidly varying nature of the vehicular propagation environment, fast millimeter wave channel sounders are required. We present a channel sounder design capable of covering 360 degrees in azimuth and 60 degrees in elevation with 200 individual beam directions in 6.25 ms by using four phased arrays simultaneously. The channel measurements are accompanied by high resolution positioning and video data, allowing channel sounding to be …
This paper develops a stochastic geometry-based approach for the modeling and analysis of finite millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless networks where a random number of transmitters and receivers are randomly located inside a finite region. We consider a selection strategy to serve a reference receiver by the transmitter providing the maximum average received power among all transmitters. Considering the unique features of mmWave communications such as directional transmit and receive beamforming and having different channels for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) links according to …
Predicting the millimeter wave (mmWave) beams and blockages using sub-6GHz channels has the potential of enabling mobility and reliability in scalable mmWave systems. These gains attracted increasing interest in the last few years. Prior work, however, has focused on extracting spatial channel characteristics at the sub-6GHz band first and then use them to reduce the mmWave beam training overhead. This approach has a number of limitations: (i) It still requires a beam search at mmWave, (ii) its performance is sensitive to the error associated with extracting the sub-6GHz channel characteristic…
Vehicular communications have attracted more and more attention recently from both industry and academia due to its strong potential to enhance road safety, improve traffic efficiency, and provide rich on-board information and entertainment services. In this paper, we discuss fundamental physical layer issues that enable efficient vehicular communications and present a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art research. We first introduce vehicular channel characteristics and modeling, which are the key underlying features differentiating vehicular communications from other types of wirel…
Many operators have been bullish on the role of millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications in fifth-generation (5G) mobile broadband because of its capability of delivering extreme data speeds and capacity. However, mmWave comes with challenges related to significantly high path loss and susceptibility to blockage. Particularly, when mmWave communication is applied to a mobile terminal device, communication can be frequently broken because of rampant hand blockage. Although a number of mobile phone companies have suggested configuring multiple sets of antenna modules at different locations on a m…
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 experimental data recently reported in the literature. The path-loss model accounts for different distributions for 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 Po…
Vehicular communications essentially support automotive applications for safety and infotainment. For this reason, industry leaders envision an enhanced role of vehicular communications in the fifth generation of mobile communications technology. Over the years, the number of vehicle-mounted sensors has increased steadily, which potentially leads to more volume of critical data communications in a short time. Also, emerging applications such as remote/autonomous driving and infotainment such as high-definition movie streaming require data-rates on the order of multiple Gbit/s. Such high data-r…
To deal with the explosive growth of mobile traffic, millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications with abundant bandwidth resources have been applied to vehicular networks. As mmWave signal is sensitive to blockage, we introduce the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided two-way relaying system for vehicular connection enhancement and coverage expansion. How to improve transmission efficiency and to reduce latency time in such a dynamic scenario is a challenging problem. In this paper, we formulate the joint optimization problem of relay selection and transmission scheduling, aiming to reduce transmis…
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication opens up tens of giga-hertz (GHz) spectrum in the mmWave band for use by next-generation wireless systems, thereby solving the problem of spectrum scarcity. Maintaining connectivity stands out to be a key design challenge for mmWave networks deployed in urban regions due to the blockage effect characterizing mmWave propagation. Specifically, mmWave signals can be blocked by buildings and other large urban objects. In this paper, we set out to investigate the blockage effect on the connectivity of mmWave networks in a Manhattan-type urban region modeled us…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) signals are much more sensitive to blockage, which results in a significant increase of the outage probability, especially for the users at the edge of the cells. In this paper, we exploit the technique of base station (BS) cooperation to improve the performance of the cell-edge users in the downlink transmission of mmWave cellular networks. We design two cooperative schemes, which are referred to as fixed-number BS cooperation (FNC) scheme and fixed-region BS cooperation (FRC) scheme, respectively. In FNC scheme, the cooperative BSs consist of the M nearest BSs around…
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) cellular systems are power-limited and susceptible to blockages. As a result, mmWave connectivity will be likely to be intermittent. One promising approach to increasing mmWave connectivity and range is to use relays. Device-to-device (D2D) communications open the door to the vast opportunities of D2D and device-to-network relaying for mmWave cellular systems. In this correspondence, we study how to select a good relay for a given source-destination pair in a two-hop mmWave cellular system, where the mmWave links are subject to random Bernoulli blockages. In such a sys…
