Multiple UE Link Selection for 28GHz Channel in 5G Network

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) band use is the key to meet the demand for high-speed wireless communication in future mobile networks. The mm-wave throughput performance is often unstable due to the influence of blocking objects, the fading effect, etc. A promising way to improve the throughput performance of the mm-wave channel is for multiple user equipment (UEs) to be used by the user and to integrate their links to achieve the extremely high requirements of the future mobile network. Since the mm-wave channel throughput strongly depends on where the UE is kept, the simple cooperation of multiple-UE-link of the same user enables stable throughput performance, while there is little gain in the multiple-UE-link cooperation in the micro-wave channel. In this paper, we evaluated the potential throughput of multiple-UE-link cooperation by using measured throughputs in 28 GHz channels in a fifth generation mobile communication system (5G) network. In addition, we propose the link selection by using measured reference signal received power (RSRP) cross-correlations between UE links to reduce power consumption. Experimental results show that the potential throughput of three UE links is 22.2 % greater than when using a single UE link at the 5%-ile cumulative distribution function (CDF). Also, we show that the proposed method achieves throughput performance with two UE links that is the same as when three UE links are used at the 5%-ile CDF and is 9.9% greater than that of the conventional link selection.