Impact of Twelve-Sector Picocells with 3D-BF in mmWave HetNets

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) with picocells operating at millimeter wave (mmWave) band provide higher user throughput because of the enormous amount of signal bandwidth. Downlink three-dimensional beamforming (3D-BF) is a promising technique to improve the received SINR of user terminal (UE). This paper proposes mmWave HetNet composed of twelve-sector picocells equipped with 3D-BF. Using system-level computer simulations, the average and 5-percentile user throughput are clarified as parameters of Tx beams used in 3D-BF. We also refer to the comparison with three-sector and six-sector picocells in mmWave HetNets. From the simulation results, we confirmed that the twelve-sector picocells with 9 beams in 3D-BF can improve the average user throughput by approximate 1.7 times compared with three-sector picocells with 36 beams in 3D-BF.