Dynamic Beam Assignment in Narrow Beamforming and mmWave Systems

Abstract

In millimeter Wave (mmWave) cellular communication systems, transmission range is inherently limited to only a short distance. In order to overcome this drawback, the mmWave-based cellular communications systems are limited to “pencilbeam” configuration to achieve larger cell radius. Small beam-width (typically 10°), coverage requirements, and physical constraint of small number of beams from an antenna array lead to requiring multiple antenna arrays at a mmWave cellular base-station. For such systems, we advocate the need for a structured approach to beam assignment for various users. We provide a problem formulation where beam assignment is done to achieve system-wide stability, design a learning algorithm to achieve the beam assignment under dynamically varying users' activity, and way of performing call admission control. Given the introductory nature of this problem, we intentionally refrain from delving into detailed scheduling aspects from point of view of fairness - with a remark that such a fairness-providing scheme will run as an inner loop to our proposed system.