Millimeter-Wave Massive Analog Relay MU-MIMO With Blocking-Empowered User Scheduling Toward 6G

Abstract

The utilization of millimeter wave (mmWave) in 5G represents a milestone in cellular networks, which unprecedentedly enhances communication capacity. Nevertheless, mobile users are hard to satisfy with the short coverage and vulnerability to blockage of current mmWave services, which also undermines industrial confidence in mmWave promotion. To solve this dilemma, in 6G, relay technologies, such as analog repeaters and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), need to be effectively used to enhance the coverage and capacity of existing mmWave stations. In this paper, we introduce a mmWave massive relay system, consisting of massive analog relay stations to construct artificial channels for mobile users. To enhance the performance of mmWave multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output (MU-MIMO), we propose a user scheduling method that actively exploits the blocking environment to reduce interference and optimize the system capacity. Numerical analysis and simulations are conducted to validate the proposed system and methods.