Field trial of millimeter-wave-based MHN system for vehicular communications

Abstract

In this paper, we presented a preliminary field trial conducted at Yulgok street in Gangneung city, Korea, which is a typical urban environment, and showed the feasibility of millimeter-wave (mmWave)-based Mobile Hotspot Network (MHN) system for vehicular communications. The paper also provided a brief overview of the MHN system mainly focusing on the design of physical layer, radio frequency (RF) and antenna. Using the first version of MHN prototype, we tested the performance of the system at three different paths of Yulgok street, and the test results revealed that the downlink data rate of 1Gbps was achievable at most of testing paths except for some spots where slight performance degradations were observed mainly due to the beam misalignment and blockage of line-of-sight (LoS) signal. Through the field trial, we can also draw several conclusions giving us valuable insights into developing future versions of MHN system for vehicular communications.