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Large-scale massive MIMO network deployments can provide higher spectral efficiency and better coverage for future communication systems like 5G. Due to the large number of antennas at the base station, the system achieves stable channel quality and spatially separable channels to the different users. In this work, linear, planar, circular and cylindrical arrays are used in the evaluation of a large-scale multi-cell massive MIMO network. The system-level performance is predicted using two different kinds of channel models. First, a ray-based deterministic tool is utilized in a real North American city environment. Second, an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channel model is considered, as often used in previously published massive MIMO studies. The analysis is conducted in a 16-macro-cell network with outdoor and randomly distributed users. It is shown that the array configuration has a large impact on the throughput statistics. Although the system-level performance with i.i.d. Rayleigh fading can be close to the deterministic prediction in some situations (e.g., with large linear arrays), significant differences are noticed when considering other types of arrays

Future dense small-cell networks are one of the key 5G candidates to offer outdoor high access data rates, especially in millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands. At those frequencies, the free space propagation loss and shadowing (from buildings, vegetation or any kind of obstacles) are far stronger than in the traditional radio cellular spectrum. Therefore, the cell range is expected to be limited to 50 – 100 meters, and directive high gain antennas are required at least for the base stations. This paper investigates the kind of topology that is required to serve a suburban area with a small-cell network operating at 60 GHz and equipped with beam-steering antennas. A real environment is considered to introduce practical deployment and propagation constraints. The analysis relies on Monte-Carlo system simulations with non-full buffer, and ray-based predictions. The ray-tracing techniques are today identified as a relevant solution to capture the main channel properties impacting the beam-steering performance (angular dispersion, inter-link correlation); and the one involved in the present study was specifically enhanced to deal with detailed vegetation modeling. In addition to the user outage, the paper evaluates the evolution of the inter-cell interference along with the user density, and investigates the network behavior in case of local strong obstructions.

Ray-based and hybrid propagation models are today considered as valuable solutions to fulfill 5G wireless channel modeling requirements. They are a complement or alternative to the stochastic approaches when link-level and system-level simulations deal with millimeter-wave (mmWave), ultradense deployment and/or large antenna arrays. The present article proposes an extension of an urban ray-based model for the assessment of a 60-GHz outdoor small-cell network. The multi-paths are predicted from interactions with the static environment, but also with randomly-positioned vehicles and user-bodies. Both the vehicles and the user-body generate ray-path blockage, and (in case of the vehicle) new propagation paths. This sometimes affects the cell selection or beam orientation, and significantly changes the received signal strength and inter-cell interference. In this paper, the blockage effect is first modelled and assessed in simple scenarios before it is introduced into a whole mmWave small-cell network simulation via a stochastic process. The impacts on the signal strength, interference level and the signal-to-interference ratio are evaluated and discussed.

One of the key aspects of massive MIMO (mMIMO) is its ability to spatially differentiate between multiple simultaneous users. The spatial separability improves as the number of base station (BS) antenna elements is increased. In real BS deployments, the number of BS array elements will be fixed, and expected to provide the required service to a certain number of simultaneous users in the existing propagation environment. The mMIMO performance is investigated in this paper, in an urban macro-cell scenario, using three kinds of channel models with different complexity levels: the independent and identically distributed Rayleigh fading model, a geometrybased stochastic model, and a physical ray-based software. Two performance indicators are analyzed: the favorable propagation metric and the multi-user eigenvalue distribution. Two frequencies (2 GHz and 28 GHz) and two antenna array shapes (linear and circular) are considered and compared.