An end-to-end fiber-based network holds the potential to provide multi-gigabit fixed access to end-users. However, deploying fiber access, especially in areas where fiber is non-existent, can be time-consuming and costly, resulting in delayed returns for Operators. This work investigates transmission data from fixed broadband wireless access in the mmWave band in 5G. Given the growing interest in this domain, understanding the transmission characteristics of the data becomes crucial. While existing datasets for the mmWave band are available, they are often generated from simulated environments. In this study, we introduce a dataset compiled from real-world transmission data collected from the Fixed Broadband Wireless Access in mmWave Band device (RWM6050). The aim is to facilitate self-configuration based on transmission characteristics. To achieve this, we propose an online machine learning-based approach for real-time training and classification of transmission characteristics. Additionally, we present two advanced temporal models for more accurate classifications. Our results demonstrate the ability to detect transmission angle and distance directly from the analysis of transmission data with very high accuracy, reaching up to 99% accuracy on the combined classification task. Finally, we outline promising future research directions based on the collected data.

We propose a deep learning-based method that uses spatial and temporal information extracted from the sub-6GHz band to predict/track beams in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band. In more detail, we consider a dual-band communication system operating in both the sub-6GHz and mmWave bands. The objective is to maximize the achievable mutual information in the mmWave band with a hybrid analog/digital architecture where analog precoders (RF precoders) are taken from a finite codebook. Finding a RF precoder using conventional search methods incurs large signalling overhead, and the signalling scales with the number of RF chains and the resolution of the phase shifters. To overcome the issue of large signalling overhead in the mmWave band, the proposed method exploits the spatiotemporal correlation between sub-6GHz and mmWave bands, and it predicts/tracks the RF precoders in the mmWave band from sub-6GHz channel measurements. The proposed method provides a smaller candidate set so that performing a search over that set significantly reduces the signalling overhead compared with conventional search heuristics. Simulations show that the proposed method can provide reasonable achievable rates while significantly reducing the signalling overhead.

In cellular systems, the user equipment (UE) can request a change in the frequency band when its rate drops below a threshold on the current band. The UE is then instructed by the base station (BS) to measure the quality of candidate bands, which requires a measurement gap in the data transmission, thus lowering the data rate. We propose a band switching approach based on machine learning that does not require any measurement gap. Our proposed classifier-based band switching policy instead exploits spatial and spectral correlation between radio frequency signals in different bands based on knowledge of the UE location. We focus on switching between a lower (e.g. 3.5 GHz) band and a millimeter wave band (e.g. 28 GHz), and design and evaluate two classification models that are trained on a ray-tracing dataset. A key insight is that measurement gaps are overkill, in that only the relative order of the bands is necessary for band selection, rather than a full channel estimate. Our proposed machine learning-based policies achieve roughly 30% improvement in mean effective rates over those of the industry standard policy, while achieving misclassification errors well below 0.5%.

We consider the band assignment (BA) problem in dual-band systems, where the basestation (BS) chooses one of the two available frequency bands (centimeter-wave and millimeter-wave bands) to communicate with the user equipment (UE). While the millimeter-wave band might offer higher data rate, there is a significant probability of outage during which the communication should be carried on the (more reliable) centimeter-wave band. We consider two variations of the BA problem, one-shot and sequential BA. For the former the BS uses only the currently observed information to decide whether to switch to the other frequency band, for the sequential BA, the BS uses a window of previously observed information to predict the best band for a future time step. We provide two approaches to solve the BA problem, (i) a deep learning approach that is based on Long Short Term Memory and/or multi-layer Neural Networks, and (ii) a Gaussian Process based approach, which relies on the assumption that the channel states are jointly Gaussian. We compare the achieved performances to several benchmarks in two environments: (i) a stochastic environment, and (ii) microcellular outdoor channels obtained by ray-tracing. In general, the deep learning solution shows superior performance in both environments.