Millimeter wave multi-beam antenna combining for 5G cellular link improvement in New York City

The performance of multi-beam antenna equal gain combining for improving signal quality in future millimeter-wave cellular systems is evaluated in this article. Employing experimental data obtained from 28 GHz and 73 GHz propagation measurements in the dense urban environment of New York City, we present the impact of coherent bi-beam, tri-beam and quad-beam combining on path loss and shadow factors. The results reveal that a maximum of 24.9 dB improvement in path loss at 28 GHz and 34.8 dB at 73 GHz for 100 m T-R (transmitter-receiver) separation distances can be achieved via combining the strongest four received signals from distinct beams, when compared to the case of signals at the receiver with randomly pointed beams. Comparable path loss values are achieved at both 28 and 73 GHz bands. This paper demonstrates the potential of utilizing spatial filtering and beam combining to significantly improve received signal levels and link margins at millimeter-wave frequencies.