Analysis of circular and cylindrical array arrangements for mmwave 5G beamforming techniques

In this paper, we study the performance of a 5G base station working in the mmWave range equipped with a cylindrical array. Conventional and Capon beamforming techniques are taken into account. We consider both isotropic and directive antenna elements and we evaluate the trade-off between antennas per ring and number of rings with fixed number of total antennas. Results are provided in terms of average achievable per-user rate with different system configurations, such as of network loading. We show that in the presented scenario, where users are randomly deployed in a hexagonal plane, the best performance occurs when the cylindrical array degenerates in a circular array.