Blockage Avoidance In Relay Paths For Roadside Mmwave Backhaul Networks

With the increasing use of bandwidth-hungry applications on mobile devices, mmWave communication is considered a key enabling technology for 5G cellular networks. One very promising use of mmWave communication is in wireless backhaul for 5G. In this paper, we consider wireless backhaul links deployed along the side of a road, which will be a common scenario both in urban environments and on highways. We investigate blockage robustness within an interference-free topology previously proposed for roadside wireless backhaul. Reconfiguration algorithms are provided both for the case where rescheduling is possible after reconfiguration and for the case that the original transmission schedule must be maintained. We prove that our reconfiguration algorithms are guaranteed to maintain connectivity under several obstacle scenarios. We also evaluate the algorithms' performance with varying numbers of randomly-placed obstacles through simulation. Results show that our algorithms not only achieve high throughputs close to the no-blockage case, but also provide high blockage tolerance rates for the common case of a few obstacles along a several hundred meter section of a road.