Positioning-Aided 3D Beamforming for Enhanced Communications in mmWave Mobile Networks

The extension from centimeter wave frequencies to millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies has triggered an enormous transformation in terms of radio access architecture for future wireless networks, and it has therefore empowered unlimited opportunities for the user-oriented services and applications. Besides mmWave as a driving element, beamforming (BF) will be incorporated as a key enabling technology for the future wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a positioning-aided beamforming (PA-BF) framework for enhanced downlink communications in a cloud-oriented mmWave mobile networks. We show that the proposed PA-BF achieves a higher effective transmit ratio that is equivalent to a lower initial access latency than the conventional codebook-based BF, which in turn manifests its capability to support high-velocity mobile users. We also analyze the impact of positioning accuracies on the performance of PA-BF and discuss the trade-offs between different BF strategies with varied system parameters. Our simulation results demonstrate that, with a narrow beam phased array and reasonably good positioning accuracy, the PA-BF framework is capable of achieving higher spectral efficiency than the considered codebook-based BF especially at higher velocities.