Millimeter Wave in Next generation Cellular Networks: A Study

Increase in growth of cellular network users results in congestion of networks and blocking of calls. The spectrum provided by 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G is not sufficient enough to meet the ever-growing demands of users. This motivates the use of Extremely High Frequency (EHF) band in communications. This EHF band, also known as Millimeter Wave (mmWave) band supports multi-Gigabit data rates. This feature attracts the cellular operators to use the mmWave band for cellular communication. This band also poses some limitations to wireless service providers. These high frequencies cannot penetrate the obstacles and cover very short ranges. This limitation can be used as an advantage to allow increased reuse of frequency. This study gives an insight of the cellular networks based on mmWave frequencies. Since all the frequencies in an mmWave band cannot be used for application in mobile networks we studied the practical application of mmWave frequencies for use in cellular networks. In this paper, various propagation characteristics of millimeter waves are studied. The most suitable frequencies are identified on the bases of various loss parameters encountered during propagation. We conclude our study with a discussion of some scenarios where mmWave frequencies can be leveraged to the great extent for use in 5G and next- generation cellular networks.