Network Performance Evaluation of a Sub-THz Downlink System Operating Under Dynamic DTX

This paper evaluates the network performance of a cellular system operating at 100 GHz with bandwidth of around 3 GHz under a dynamic transmission and reception point (TRP)-side discontinuous transmission (DTX) regime. The use of sub-terahertz (THz) bands is envisioned as a means to achieve higher data rates in sixth-generation (6G) systems. However, in this network setup, the power consumption at TRPs’ radio components packed with several antenna elements significantly increases due to the very high processing burden in such a wide bandwidth. A TRP-side DTX method is proposed to avoid overheating issues, which controls the amount of downlink slot transmissions while guaranteeing cell-specific reference signaling. Simulation results considering different DTX settings and traffic loads are presented and discussed. Results show that the considered sub-THz system with the proposed DTX method can provide higher data rates and close to the same spectral efficiency compared to a typical baseline millimeter wave (mmWave) system operating at 28 GHz with 400 MHz bandwidth. It was possible to reach close to 7 times higher data rates in the simulated system utilizing the dynamic DTX method, compared to a theoretical data rate increase of 7.6 times based solely on bandwidth comparison.

IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology