Interference Management and Capacity Analysis for mm-Wave Picocells in Urban Canyons

Millimeter (mm) wave picocellular networks are a promising approach for delivering the 1000-fold capacity increase required to keep up with projected demand for wireless data: the available bandwidth is orders of magnitude larger than that in existing cellular systems, and the small carrier wavelength enables the realization of highly directive antenna arrays in compact form factors, thus drastically increasing spatial reuse. In this paper, we carry out an interference analysis for mm-wave picocells in an urban canyon with a dense deployment of base stations. Each base station sector can serve multiple simultaneous users, which implies that both intra- and inter-cell interference must be managed. We propose a cross-layer approach to interference management based on (i) suppressing interference at the physical layer and (ii) managing the residual interference at the medium access control layer. We provide an estimate of network capacity, and establish that 1000-fold increase relative to conventional LTE cellular networks is indeed feasible.