The Impact of Network Densification and Spectrum Sharing on Real-World mmWave Mobile Networks

This paper investigates the impact of spectrum sharing and network densification through sectorization in a local mmwave mobile network. Channel propagation was ray-traced in a real world environment while antenna radiation patterns were generated based on measurements of a real patch antenna. Network performance was quantified in therms of SINR (Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise-Ratio) and throughput using SINR-CQI (Channel Quality Indicator) mapping and formulas found in 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) Rel.15. Comparisons between the same 'captures' of the network were made under different sectorization and spectrum access conditions. Simulation results support that the benefits of combining spectrum sharing and sectorization are multifold but the higher sectorization strategies do not always translate to better network performance. The impact of interference should be taken into account when aggressively re-using the spectrum in a non-orthogonal manner, even at mmwave frequencies.