Modeling and Link Budget Estimation of Directional mmWave Outdoor Environment for 5G

摘要

Narrow pencil beamforming is a key enabling technique for millimeter wave (mmWave) systems to achieve high link quality. Employing highly directional narrow beam antennas will deliver unique requirements on mmWave channel modeling. In this paper, we propose a low complexity mmWave channel model to analyze the performance of line of sight (LOS) and non-line of sight (NLOS) directional outdoor links in several reference cases. This ray tracing based model integrates the antenna geometry of a highly directional antenna in 3D plane. The effects of specific attenuation and foliage losses are also incorporated to enhance the model accuracy. Simulation results show that the deterministic channel fading gain varies as a function of antenna location, height and beamwidth in addition to its variations against distance. The model is validated against standard channel models and measurements, at frequencies and deployment scenarios reported in the literature. Furthermore, link budget estimates and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) results are evaluated. The proposed model, unlike many other models, describes the channel for any mmWave frequency, antenna beamwidth, transmitter/receiver height and location by just changing these parameters in the simulator. The study highlights the need to integrate directional antenna effects and deployment parameters in the channel model to have accurate performance predictions.