Millimeter Wave Wireless Networks:

Potentials and Challenges

Sundeep Rangan, NYU-Poly
Joint work with Felipe Gomez-Cuba,
Ted Rappaport, Elza Erkip

March 11, 2015

Rutgers Colloquium

1 NYU Wireless
 Outline
Millimeter Wave: A New Frontier for Cellular

Can it Work? Measurements in NYC

NYU WIRELESS

Relaying Revisited

Other Projects and Future Work

2 NYU Wireless
 MmWave: The New Frontier for Cellular
Massive increase in bandwidth
Near term opportunities in LMDS and E-Bands
Up to 200x total over long-time
Spatial degrees of freedom from large antenna arrays

Commercial 64
From Khan, Pi Millimeter Wave Mobile Broadband: antenna element
Unleashing 3-300 GHz spectrum, 2011 array

3 NYU Wireless
 Millimeter Wave Before Cellular
Jagadis Bose at Royal Institution, London 1898
Demonstration of 60 GHz transmission

mmWave backhaul
60 GHz Wireless LAN 802.11ad
Image from http://mobilebackhaul.blog.com/
Photo from WiLocity

4 NYU Wireless
 Key Challenges for Mobile Cellular
All transmissions are directional:
2
Friis Law: = Path loss 2
4
Can be overcome with beamforming: , 2
But requires directional search, tracking to support mobility

Shadowing
Mortar, brick, concrete > 150 dB
Human body: Up to 35 dB
NLOS propagation relies on reflections and scattering

5 NYU Wireless
 Millimeter Wave Cellular Vision

Uday Mudoi, Electronic Design, 2012 http://www.miwaves.eu/

Small cells
Directional transmissions
Relaying / mesh topology

6 NYU Wireless
 Outline
Millimeter Wave: A New Frontier for Cellular

Can it Work? Measurements in NYC

NYU WIRELESS

Relaying Revisited

Other Projects and Future Work

7 NYU Wireless
 NYC 28 and 73 GHz Measurements
Focus on urban canyon
environment
Likely initial use case
Mostly NLOS
Worst-case setting
Measurements mimic microcell
type deployment:
Rooftops 2-5 stories to street-level
Distances up to 200m
All images here from Rappaports measurements:

Azar et al, 28 GHz Propagation Measurements for Outdoor

Cellular Communications Using Steerable Beam
Antennas in New York City, ICC 2013

8 NYU Wireless
 Isotropic Path Loss Models
Standard linear path loss model
= + log +
Measures total power
Aggregate across all directions
Separate LOS and NLOS models

Akdeniz, Liu, Samimi, Sun, Rangan,

Rappaport, Erkip JSAC 2014

9 NYU Wireless
 Isotropic Path Loss Comparison

Isotropic NLOS path loss

measured in NYC
~ 20 - 25 dB worse than
3GPP urban micro model
20 dB loss for fc=2.5 GHz
But beamforming will
offset this loss.
Bottom line:
mmW has no effective
increase in path loss

10 NYU Wireless
 Hybrid LOS-NLOS-Outage Model
mmW signals susceptible to
severe shadowing.
Not incorporated in standard
3GPP models
New three state link model:
LOS-NLOS-outage
Form derived from random
shape theory
(Bai, Vaze, Heath 13)
Outages significant only at
d>150m
Will help small cell by
reducing interference

11 NYU Wireless
 Angular Spread
Measured powers at different
TX-RX angular pairs.
Avg. of 2 clusters of paths
detected
More likely with time
resolution
Typical beamwidth in each
cluster:
~10 deg in AoA RX
RX power at different angles ~ 7 deg in AoA TX
Typical 2-3 spatial DoFs

12 NYU Wireless
 Simulations: SNR Distribution
Simulation assumptions:
200m ISD
3-sector hex BS
20 / 30 dBm DL / UL power
8x8 antenna at BS
4x4 (28 GHz), 8x8 (73 GHz) at UE

A new regime:
High SNR on many links
Much better than current
macro-cellular
Interference is non dominant

13 NYU Wireless
 Comparison to Current LTE
Initial results show significant gain over LTE
Further gains with spatial mux, subband scheduling and wider bandwidths

System Duplex fc Antenna Cell throughput Cell edge rate

antenna BW (GHz) (Mbps/cell) (Mbps/user, 5%)
DL UL DL UL
mmW 1 GHz 28 4x4 UE 1514 1468 28.5 19.9
TDD 8x8 eNB
73 8x8 UE 1435 1465 24.8 19.8
8x8 eNB
Current 20+20 2.5 (2x2 DL, 53.8 47.2 1.80 1.94
LTE MHz 2x4 UL)
FDD

10 UEs per cell, ISD=200m,

hex cell layout
LTE capacity estimates from 36.814
~ 25x gain ~ 10x gain

14 NYU Wireless
 Outline
Millimeter Wave: A New Frontier for Cellular

Can it Work? Measurements in NYC

NYU WIRELESS

Relaying Revisited

Other Projects and Future Work

15 NYU Wireless
 NYU WIRELESS
Exciting new center
Ted Rappaport, founder
Faculty across ECE, Courant and Med school

Pioneering in mmWave for cellular

First to demonstrate feasibility
Measurements in NYC
Research includes:
Cellular design, capacity studies, prototyping
Biological impact, medical applications
Bringing technology to reality

16 NYU Wireless
 Industrial Affiliates
NYU WIRELESS is Leading Industry

14 industrial affiliates
Vendors, carriers & test

Leading contributions to industry

Channel modeling groups
FCC Notice of Inquiry

Host: Brooklyn 5G Summit

New entrants:
SiBeam: Leader in mmWave RF Ics
StraightPath: Nationwide holder of
38 GHz spectrum

17 NYU Wireless
 Outline
Millimeter Wave: A New Frontier for Cellular

Can it Work? Measurements in NYC

NYU WIRELESS

Relaying Revisited

Other Projects and Future Work

18 NYU Wireless
 Multihop Relaying for mmWave
Significant work in multi-hop
transmissions for cellular
Gains have been minimal
Why?
Current cellular systems are
bandwidth-limited
Millimeter wave may be different
Overcome outage via macrodiversity
Many degrees of freedom

19 NYU Wireless
 Consider Two Possible Protocols
ISH: Infrastructure single hop IMH: Infrastructure multi hop

Direct transmissions to mobiles Multi-hop transmissions using UEs

Similar to current cellular Rarely used today

[Gomez-Cuba, Rangan, Erkip, Gonzalez-Castano, ISIT 2014]

20 NYU Wireless
 Scaling Laws Analysis

Randomly drop mobiles.

Param Scaling
Area, bandwidth, number of antennas
Bandwidth = 0
scale with
Num BS = 0
Estimate scaling on antenans
1 Area = 0
lim log Num BS = 0
n
Estimate rate to a constant factor.
Assume EGoS
Base stations have multiple antennas
Mobiles have single antenna

21 NYU Wireless
 Protocols for Downlink
Infrastructure Single Hop
BSs transmit using to UEs directly using MU-MIMO
Frequency reuse one. Treat out-of-cell interference as noise
Infrastructure Multi Hop
Cell is divided into subcells
Traffic is routed from BS to mobiles via multi-hop
MU-MIMO on first hop from BS.
Partial frequency reuse and time-division for half-duplex
constraint and interference
Sub-cell size is optimized

22 NYU Wireless
 Achievable Rates: IMH vs. ISH
Gain with widebands and
large num mobiles / BS.
Rate per user

Param Scaling
Bandwidth = 0
Num BS = 0
antenans
Area = 0
Num BS = 0
Path loss
Fixed DoFs Increasing DoFs
(current cellular) (e.g. mmW)

Degs of freedom per BS (bandwidth * antenna)

23 NYU Wireless
 Regimes
Interference vs power limit regime:
When DoFs per BS is large, rate scaling ceases to increase
There is a limit to very large DoFs

Multi-hop transmissions can better exploit high DoFs

Shortens range reduces power limit
But, requires large scaling on number of mobiles / base station

24 NYU Wireless
 What is the Right Protocol for 5G?
Area constant. Increase mobile density
Technology Scaling Protocol Rate per user
No action BSs density fixed ISH or IMH Decreases with mobiles per cell
DoF per BS is fixed
Densification Increase BS per ISH or IMH Improves due to increased BS
mobile density
DoF per BS is fixed

Massive MIMO BS per mobile fixed ISH Increases until the SNR to furthest
or mmWave Increase DoF per BS mobile hits threshold
IMH Increases until the SNR to first
mobile hits threshold
IMH is not needed for densification
But, IMH is required for Massive MIMO or mmWave
25 NYU Wireless
 Link Layer Capacity
Assume point-to-point MIMO link has capacity scaling:

( min , ) Bandwidth limited

=
Power limited
min( , )
Critical bandwidth

=
min( , )

Applies to coherent and non-coherent channel

For non-coherent, number of channel parameters can grow linearly
with bandwidth
Assumes CSIT at transmitter
Channel estimation and feedback overhead is a constant factor

26 NYU Wireless
 Estimating the Network Capacity
Assume path loss model = , > 2
Assume MU-MIMO can use full spatial DoFs
Treat interference as noise
Use worst case distances
For IMH, use partial frequency reuse to separate neighbors in
adjacent sub-cells (most a constant capacity loss)
For IMH, optimize subcell size / number of hops
Ensure every sub-cell has at least one mobile

27 NYU Wireless
 Can We Do Better than IMH?
IMH is capacity achieving.
Use a cut-set argument
Hierarchical cooperation
Rate per user

not necessary
Difference with
infrastructure vs ad hoc
IRH: Infra relay hop
Fixed DoFs Use if IMH is not practical
(current cellular) Increasing DoFs
Multihop from fixed relays
(e.g. mmW)
not mobiles

28 NYU Wireless
 Making Multihop Work
Interference-to-noise

Many issues

Network discovery

Beamforming
synchronization &
tracking
Directional isolation

Dynamic duplexing
Qualcomm FlashLinQ
frame structure
29 NYU Wireless
 Significant Potential Gains
Num Capacity Cell edge
RNs DL UL DL UL
0 2090 1890 10.0 3.40
2 2370 2280 28.2 5.99
4 2440 2330 238.6 244.5

Significant gains possible

Esp. cell edge
Cell capacity limited by single stream

Dynamic duplexing
10 UEs per cell,
4x4 antenna array, Multi-hop optimal scheduling
single stream
Garcia-Rois, Gomez-Cuba, Akdeniz, Gonzalez-Castano, Burguillo-Rial, Rangan,
Lorenzo, IEEE TWC, in revision

30 NYU Wireless
 Outline
Millimeter Wave: A New Frontier for Cellular

Can it Work? Measurements in NYC

NYU WIRELESS

Relaying Revisited

Other Projects and Future Work

31 NYU Wireless
 Channel Measurements
Outage
Current measurements:
Outage from a single base station

Next steps:
Joint probability multiple base stations
Changes over time, distance
Combine with ray tracing?

Needed to assess:
Macro-diversity, handover

32 NYU Wireless
 Channel Measurements
Deployment Models
Current measurements:
Rooftop antenna
Traditional microcell
Wide coverage, but NLOS

Next set of measurements:

Street furniture
Lower range, but greater LOS paths
More likely deployment model

33 NYU Wireless
 Low-Power Beamforming Architectures

A/D present major power bottleneck

Wide bandwidths, large number of antennas
Current solutions use analog BF via phase shifters
Hybrid BF
Many research questions
Low-rate fully digital architectures?
Synchronization, channel estimation?
Implications for multiple access, cell search?

34 NYU Wireless
 Directional Cell Search and Adaptation

Synchronization may be key limiting factor

Rapid changes from blockage

Obstructions by buildings, hands,

Other challenges:
Demands for very low latency
Multi-flow connectivity
Must discover many elements

35 NYU Wireless
 Spatial Channel Estimation
Estimating directions of arrival is essential for:
Tracking, synchronization,
Analog BF, can look in only direction at a time
Spatial covariance via non-negative matrix completion
min + , =
>0

Beamforming with a 8x8 array

Multipath NLOS channel
NYC measurements

[Amir-Eliasi, Rangan, Rappaport 2015]

36 NYU Wireless
 Cell Search with Low-Rate
Digital Architectures
Significant gains for low-rate digital architectures
Enable searching in multiple directions
Also beneficial for control messaging / multiple access

Detection in initial cell search

Digital BF vs. analog BF

Barati, Hosseini, Rangan, SPAWC 2014

12 dB gain

37 NYU Wireless
 Other MAC Layer Work
How to design LTE for mmW?

Key concerns
Modifications for directionality
Intermittency in links
Qualcomm FlashLinQ
frame structure
Areas of focus for next year:
Cell search, synchronization
Dynamic duplexing
Multi-flow, carrier aggregation

38 NYU Wireless
 Adaptive and MultiPath TCP
Rapid changes in rate:
Cells intermittently blocked.

UE
Current TCP is slow to adapt Gateway

New research directions

New stochastic TCP mechanisms
Multi-path congestion control

Tingting Lu, Subramanian, Panwar

39 NYU Wireless
 Heterogeneous Networks
Many aspects of heterogeneity
4G and 5G
Indoor / outdoor
Third party ISP
vs Cellular operator

Many questions:
New spectrum license models?
Load balancing?
Pricing?

40 NYU Wireless
 Prototyping
This year:
Demonstrated mmW
LTE-like signal
Next steps:
Integrated NI platform
with ns3 for current LTE
Demonstrated at EuCNC,
June 2014
Will modify for mmW

41 NYU Wireless
 A Big Question
What is the killer app for mmWave?
What applications can drive huge amounts of data?
Many applications for human interaction are limited.
Video < 20 Mbps. Much lower on mobile devices.
Will data be driven by machine to machine?
Many users bursty vs. few users continuous?

What will drive very low latency (e.g. ~1ms)?

What will be the network delays?
What is the partition of mobile vs. cloud?
Where will data be located?

What about power, form factor, cost?

42 NYU Wireless
 Summary
MmWave offers tremendous potential
A once in a generation technological advance

But, many new challenges

New regime where degrees of freedom are plentiful
Dominant challenge is synchronization & intermittency
Capacity tied closely with front-end capabilities

Cellular will be re-designed

Many opportunities for research, commercialization & theory

43 NYU Wireless
 Thanks
Faculty:
Ted Rappaport, Elza Erkip, Shiv Panwar, Pei Liu
Michele Zorzi (U Padova)
Postdoc: Marco Mezzavilla
Students:
Felipe Gomez Cuba (U Vigo)
Mustafa Riza Akdeniz, Parisa Amir Eliasi, Russell Ford,
Yuanpeng Liu, George McCartney, Oner Orhan, Matthew
Samimi, Shu Sun

44 NYU Wireless
 References
Khan, Pi, Millimeter-wave Mobile Broadband (MMB): Unleashing 3-300GHz
Spectrum, Feb 2011, http://www.ieee-wcnc.org/2011/tut/t1.pdf
Rappaport et al. "Millimeter wave mobile communications for 5G cellular: It will
work!." Access, IEEE 1 (2013): 335-349.
Rangan, Rappaport, Erkip, Millimeter Wave Cellular Systems: Potentials and
Challenges, Proc. IEEE, April 2014
Akdeniz, Liu, Rangan, Rappaport, Erkip, Millimeter Wave Channel Modeling and
Cellular Capacity Evaluation, JSAC 2014
Gomez, Rangan, Erkip, Scaling Laws for Infrastructure Single and Multihop Wireless
Networks in Wideband Regimes, ISIT 2014, http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7022
Barati, Hosseini, Rangan, et al, Directional Cell Search for Millimeter Wave Cellular
Systems http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.5068
Eliasi, Rangan, and Rappaport. "Low-Rank Spatial Channel Estimation for Millimeter
Wave Cellular Systems." http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.4831

45 NYU Wireless