Beamforming router as relay to increase 5G cell coverage

Abstract: The growing traffic and global bandwidth shortage for broadband cellular communi-cation networks has motivated to explore the underutilized millimeter wave frequencyspectrum for future communications. Fifth generation (5G) is the key to empow-ering new services and use cases for people, businesses, and society at large. Withunprecedented speed and flexibility, 5G carries more data with greater reliability andresponsiveness than ever before. As 5G new radio (NR) begins to take full advantageof the high-band spectrum, i.e, the millimeter wave frequencies, new challenges arecreated. While millimeter waves offer broader bandwidth and high spatial resolution,the drawback is that the millimeter waves experience higher attenuation due to pathloss and are more prone to absorption, interference and weather conditions, thereforelimiting cell coverage.This thesis is an attempt to increase the 5G cell coverage by implementing ananalogue beamforming router in a cell. Beamforming router acts like a relay, whichextends the range of the 5G cell whenever needed, according to the position of theUser Equipment (UE) based on the information received from the gNodeB (gNB,logical 5G radio node). This thesis is investigating the downlink Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR) gain and thus possible increase in the data rate. Simulation and validation ofthe overall performance is done using MATLAB. The outcome of this study may beused to increase the 5G cell coverage if it is implemented in a real.