Improved user tracking in 5G millimeter wave mobile networks via refinement operations

The millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies offer the availability of huge bandwidths to provide unprecedented data rates to next-generation cellular mobile terminals. However, directional mmWave links are highly susceptible to rapid channel variations and suffer from severe isotropic pathloss. To face these impairments, this paper addresses the issue of tracking the channel quality of a moving user, an essential procedure for rate prediction, efficient handover and periodic monitoring and adaptation of the user's transmission configuration. The performance of an innovative tracking scheme, in which periodic refinements of the optimal steering direction are alternated to sparser refresh events, are analyzed in terms of both achievable data rate and energy consumption, and compared to those of a state-of-the-art approach. We aim at understanding in which circumstances the proposed scheme is a valid option to provide a robust and efficient mobility management solution. We show that our procedure is particularly well suited to highly variant and unstable mmWave environments.