Analysis of Human-Body Blockage in Urban Millimeter-Wave Cellular Communications
Abstract
The use of extremely high frequency (EHF) or millimeter-wave (mmWave) band has attracted significant attention for the next generation wireless access networks. As demonstrated by recent measurements, mmWave frequencies render themselves quite sensitive to "blocking" caused by obstacles like foliage, humans, vehicles, etc. However, there is a dearth of analytical models for characterizing such blocking and the consequent effect on the signal reliability. In this paper, we propose a novel, general, and tractable model for characterizing the blocking caused by humans (assuming them to be randomly located in the environment) to mmWave propagation as a function of system parameters like transmitter-receiver locations and dimensions, as well as density and dimensions of humans. Moreover, the proposed model is validated using a ray-launcher tool. Utilizing the proposed model, the blockage probability is shown to increase with human density and separation between the transmitter-receiver pair. Furthermore, the developed analysis is shown to demonstrate the existence of a transmitter antenna height that maximizes the received signal strength, which in turn is a function of the transmitter-receiver distance and their dimensions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1604.04743,
title = {Analysis of Human-Body Blockage in Urban Millimeter-Wave Cellular Communications},
author = {Margarita Gapeyenko and Andrey Samuylov and Mikhail Gerasimenko and Dmitri Moltchanov and Sarabjot Singh and Ehsan Aryafar and Shu-ping Yeh and Nageen Himayat and Sergey Andreev and Yevgeni Koucheryavy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.04743},
year = {2016}
}