Survey, Taxonomy, and Unification of Standard mmWave Channel Models for
WPAN, WLAN, and Cellular Systems in 6G
Abstract
This study aims to provide a unified view of the various standard
millimeter-wave (mmWave) channel modeling frameworks for mmWave wireless
deployments in sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks, focusing on
wireless personal area networks (WPAN), wireless local area networks
(WLAN), and cellular networks (CN). The 6G era will witness the
emergence of security-sensitive, more mission-critical, and
data-intensive applications, wherein massive amount of data will be
exchanged while satisfying the stringent requirements for latency,
reliability, trustworthiness, and data rate. Thus, mmWave connectivity
has been considered and would result in the co-existence of
decentralized networks and centralized CNs, eventually blurring the
distinction between WPANs, WLANs, and CNs. Motivated by this futuristic
vision, we first reviewed the present status of the standard channel
models for WPAN, WLAN, and CNs to understand the common characteristics
of mmWave channel models therein. We show that despite their differences
in sight- specificity levels and employed mathematical functions, all
standard channel models target the generation of a commonly structured
channel impulse response comprising eight shared components.
Furthermore, based on the affinity, we propose a research direction to
develop unified mmWave channel generation for WPAN, WLAN, and CN, where
channel simulations for the three scenarios can be conducted in an
identical framework. Our experimental results shed light on the
feasibility of the proposed research direction and highlight the
challenges and opportunities.