Coverage and Capacity of Terahertz Cellular Networks With Joint Transmission

Beamforming with high dimensional antenna arrays provides the gain needed to enable high bandwidth communication in the sub-terahertz (THz) band. The resulting narrow beams, however, come at the cost of increased sensitivity to beam alignment errors. A potential remedy to this problem is to introduce a form a macrodiversity through non-coherent joint transmission (NC-JT). We employ a stochastic geometry framework to analyze the performance of a THz network employing user-centric base station clustering and NC-JT. We derive semi-closed form lower bounds for the coverage probability and ergodic capacity experienced by a typical user in the network. Our model includes THz networks without joint transmission as a special case. Overall, our analysis indicates that joint transmission from a few base stations improves coverage and capacity by mitigating the impact of beam misalignment. Moreover, in certain settings, NC-JT is a more efficient usage a network access points compared to the non-cooperative case, and reduces the sensitivity of coverage and capacity to the choice of user beamwidth.