Coverage Analysis and Beamforming for Dense Cooperative Wireless Networks

Doctoral thesis, 2026

Current and future base stations (BSs) are expected to be densely deployed in places with high traffic demand, such as downtown, stadium, etc., each BS only needs to cover a smaller area compared to current macro BSs. Such network topology can greatly improve the BSs’ coverage probability due to the shortened link distance and increased line-of-sight (LoS) transmissions. Moreover, using large spectrum at millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands and highly directional beamforming with large antenna arrays, the network capacity is significantly increased while
limiting the interference to other users or BSs.

To model the dense wireless networks where BSs locations follow a random pattern, tools from stochastic geometry are used to express key performance metrics in accurate closed-form equations and to help understand the impact of network design
parameters including density, transmit power and number of antennas. Since mmWave systems may be based on novel hybrid beamforming architectures which have reduced hardware power consumption and cost, the beamforming algorithms
need to be based on both digital and analog beamforming, novel optimizations in resource allocations and BS cooperation are needed in order to achieve the full potential of mmWave communications, as the signal quality is prone to blockage and
high path loss.

In order to provide a better understanding of 5G performance enhancement and limitations, one of the main goals of this thesis is to analyze new models that give tractable performance metrics for dense small BS networks. Another goal in this
thesis is to study the resource allocations in multi-cell multi-user mmWave networks and integrated access and backhaul (IAB) networks. In the thesis, we will show the advantages of small cells in improving performance metrics including coverage probability and area spectral efficiency as a result of reduced path loss and shadowing, and we will show the value of cooperation by jointly optimizing the hybrid precoders in mmWave networks and by optimizing the scheduling schemes in IAB networks.