On Cost-Effective, Reliable Coverage for LoS Communications in Urban Areas

The use of ultra high frequencies in 5G and future networks to improve transmission speeds and capacity requires that users’ equipment remain in Line of Sight with the access antennas most of the service time. This requirement implies a change in perspective to plan the coverage: Antennas cannot be placed on roofs or remote antenna sites, and a robust coverage is based on multi-antenna visibility from any point. This paper tackles the problem of public street coverage in urban areas with a data-driven methodology. Starting from 3D digital maps, we formalize the problem of antenna placement as a set coverage problem and leverage powerful heuristics to implement a general algorithm that allows the exploration of different policies, returning the detailed coverage, the antenna placement, and the cost of the coverage. Results on 15 areas in 3 Italian cities show the properties of different policies and confirm for the first time on large scale real data the feasibility of Line of Sight communications with a sustainable number of antennas per km2.