Outdoor Millimeter Wave Systems for 5G Urban Cellular: Design and Analysis

In December 2012, the Office of Communication Authority (OFCA) of Hong Kong projected that total mobile traffic will increase six-fold from 2012 to 2016. Seven months later, OFCA however corrected their under-estimated statistics and re-projected that the total traffic will increase eleven-fold by 2016, which is substantial traffic growth in near future. To remedy the dire situation, OFCA has set out 5 strategies in Hong Kong including: 1) acquire additional spectrum, 2) reallocate existing spectrum, 3) improve spectral efficiency, etc. During 2013, OFCA has reallocated the 1.9-2.2GHz microwave bands to 3G and 4G systems. Reallocating the spectrum within overcrowded microwave bands is, however, a pessimistic approach. In practice, it is possible to acquire additional spectrum by shifting the frequency to the under-utilized millimeter wave bands. At the same time, spectral efficiency can be improved by adopting advanced outdoor millimeter wave beamforming techniques. In this project, we will P. 10 design and analyze outdoor millimeter wave cellular systems by proposing a practical outdoor cellular system simulator. By using the simulator, we will devise advanced interference management strategies combined with the outdoor millimeter wave beamforming techniques. The goal is to enable 2Gbps data rates targeting for 5G cellular standards.