Performance Comparison of Single- and Multi-Lobe Antenna Arrays in 5G Urban Outdoor Environments at mm-Waves via Intelligent Ray Tracing

The effect of forming single and multi-lobe beam patterns at mm-wave base station antennas on the received signal strength and co-channel interference is studied for mm-wave urban outdoor environments. A sample, simplified urban city model is used with randomly selected user positions. Ray tracing simulations are performed to analyze the channel’s directional characteristics towards the test users. Depending on the number of dominant paths, single or multiple main lobes are created in the appropriate directions. Through the simulations, it is observed that in comparison with the multi-lobe beam option, the single-lobe beam provides similar or better received power results (unless the ray phases are equalized at the transmitter or receiver with perfect channel information or there is an unexpected sudden blockage in the main path), while providing better interference cancellation capabilities towards other co-channel users.