Mm-wave Initial Access: A Context Information Overview

The attractive features of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) technologies in the forthcoming 5G networks entail a rich set of network access challenges. These technologies are characterized by high-gain array antennas to overcome the huge attenuations, this requires to resort to directional transmissions during every network operation. The initial access phase is one of the most critical, because, if not properly managed, it can introduce a non-negligible access delay caused by multiple transmission attempts along several directions. We believe that contextual information about user and network conditions can boost this discovery phase. In this paper, we investigate how differently-rich context information can impact on the duration of the initial cell access. We propose several initial access procedures that can exploit different available information and cope with the presence of obstacles within the service area. Finally, relying on the contextual information on past access attempts, we develop a recommendation system based on machine-learning techniques, which, by processing this information, can derive the best directions to explore to connect incoming users.