Performance Evaluation of B5G Moving Networks with Spatial Consistency and Random Blockages

Abstract

Moving networks is an emerging paradigm for next-generation communication networks that envisage a technology that could support moving vehicular user equipment (VUE) with high data-rates over a reliable connection under varied mobility scenarios such as high-speed trains, buses on the freeway, etc. However, while operating at mmWave frequencies, the direct base station (BS) to the VUE (BS-to-VUE) link is adversely impacted by penetration losses and frequent link outages. Link outages are caused primarily due to extremely poor Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) channel conditions at mmWave frequencies. To address this problem, a novel architecture has been proposed in literature where a vehicular moving-relay (MR) is introduced that serves the VUE via access link while the backhaul to the MR is provided by a BS. In this paper, we exhaustively analyze and numerically quantify the link fragility and outage for spatially consistent channel realizations at 28 and 73 GHz for links between the BS-to-VUE, BS-to-MR, and MR-to-VUE. Furthermore, in this study, we also capture the impact of frequent transitions among LOS and NLOS conditions, human blockage events, and penetration losses. The simulation results reveal that i) the direct link between the BS and VUE would be extremely fragile with link-outage probabilities 17% and 59.5% compared to the relay-aided link with link-outage probabilities 1.1 and 2% for 28 GHz and 73 GHz respectively and that ii) the BS-to-VUE link would be impacted severely by human blockages compared to relay aided links where only the last hop MR-to-VUE link is impacted by human blockages but negligibly due to its relatively short range. Lastly, we have determined closed-form analytical expressions to estimate the link-outage probability of the BS-to-MR link.