5G System-Level Performance Analysis of Uplink Multi-Panel Transmission in mm-Wave Frequencies

In this paper, we present an extensive system-level assessment of 5G New Radio (NR) uplink performance for a dense macro deployment at 28 GHz carrier frequency. As is demonstrated, the uplink transmit power control (TPC) configuration has significant influences on the end-user performance and cell capacity, and therefore must be carefully configured. Effects of having advanced terminals with multiple directional antenna panels are studied and compared to the performance of having simpler users with omnidirectional antennas. It is found that having advanced terminals with three or four directional antenna panels offers 15% higher cell capacity and 100% improvement in the 5%-ile cell-edge outage user throughput as compared to omni-terminals. The paper also provides guidelines for setting of the critical TPC poarameters, and their related dependencies.