Meta Distribution of the SINR for mmWave Cellular Networks with Clusters

In order to satisfy the requirement of extremely high data rate in traffic hotspot regions, millimeter wave (mmWave) has attracted significant attention in wireless communication networks. While the coverage performance of mmWave networks based on the distribution of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) has been widely studied, it provides only very limited information on the link reliability. In this paper, we provide a fine-grained performance analysis of the mmWave networks with hotspots. Specifically, we first establish a general and tractable framework to investigate the performance of mmWave networks using the Poisson cluster process integrated with several features of the mmWave band. Both open and closed association strategies are considered. To show what fraction of users in the networks achieves target reliability when the SINR is given, we derive the tier association probability and the moments of the conditional SINR distribution, based on which the exact meta distributions of SINR are given. Interestingly, in clustered mmWave networks, the widely used standard and generalized beta approximations do not work well when the blockage effect is severe. To resolve this issue, we provide a modified approximation by scaling the standard beta distribution, which is shown to be closer to the exact results. We conduct extensive simulations to study the impact of mmWave and deployment features on the performance of clustered mmWave networks. Numerical results reveal that the optimal scattering variance of mmWave base stations scales with the cluster size to maximize the number of concurrent reliable links, and increasing the antenna directivity results in more reliable communications than elevating the transmit power of mmWave base stations.