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The Impact of Capacity Averaging in Packet-Level Modeling of 5G NR with Blockage and Micromobility
The fifth and sixth (5G/6G) generations of cellular systems utilizing the millimeter wave (mmWave, 30–100 GHz) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz, 100–200 GHz) bands are known to be affected by blockage and micromobility phenomena. These effects make the channel highly time-varying in terms of the number of packets that can be serviced in a single scheduling unit. In mathematical studies of these systems, it is convenient to average the channel capacity. In this paper, we assess whether this procedure affects the performance metrics at the packet layer. To this aim, we formalize the packet service process at the wireless channel by accounting for blockage and micromobility impairments and utilize system-level simulations to address the aforementioned question. Our results show that averaging the capacity may lead to an overestimation of actual performance metrics including the packet loss probability at the medium access control (MAC) layer and the mean delay experienced by packets.