Improving the Coverage of Millimeter-Wave (mmWave) Cellular Networks using Device-to-Device Relays

The susceptibility of millimeter waveform propagation to blockages may largely restrict the coverage of mmWave signals. To overcome blockages, we propose to leverage two-hop device-to-device (D2D) relaying. Using stochastic geometry, we derive expressions for the downlink coverage probability of a relay-assisted mmWave cellular network when the D2D links (from relays to destinations) are implemented in either the mmWave or microwave band. For mmWave links, we derive the coverage probability using dominant interferer analysis while accounting for both blockages and beamforming gains. For microwave D2D links, with the Rayleigh fading assumption, we derive the coverage probability considering different path loss models for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) links. Numerical results suggest that the downlink coverage of a mmWave cellular network can be improved by enabling two-hop D2D relay transmissions. In most situations, microwave D2D relays achieve better coverage than mmWave D2D relays because microwave D2D links can be established under NLOS conditions; however, mmWave D2D relays achieve better coverage when the density of interferers is large because their antenna arrays reject interference from off-boresight directions and blockages eliminate interference from NLOS interferers. Index Terms Millimeter Wave, Cellular, D2D, coverage, stochastic geometry, Poisson point process. S. Wu and N. Mastronarde are with the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260 USA (e-mail: {shuanshu, nmastron}@buffalo.edu). R. Atat and L. Liu are with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept., University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66044 USA (e-mail: {rachad, lingjialiu}@ittc.ku.edu). ar X iv :1 61 1. 06 16 4v 1 [ cs .E T ] 1 8 N ov 2 01 6