Multi-Connectivity for Indoor Terahertz Communication with Self and Dynamic Blockage

Abstract

We derive new expressions for the connection probability and the average ergodic capacity to evaluate the performance achieved by multi-connectivity (MC) in an indoor ultra-wideband terahertz (THz) communication system. In this system, the user is affected by both self-blockage and dynamic human blockers. We first build up a three-dimensional propagation channel in this system to characterize the impact of molecular absorption loss and the shrinking usable bandwidth nature of the ultra-wideband THz channel. We then carry out new performance analysis for two MC strategies: 1) Closest line-of-sight (LOS) access point (AP) MC (C-MC), and 2) Reactive MC (R-MC). With numerical results, we validate our analysis and show the considerable improvement achieved by both MC strategies in the connection probability. We further show that the C-MC and R-MC strategies provide significant and marginal capacity gain relative to the single connectivity strategy, respectively, and increasing the number of the user's associated APs imposes completely different affects on the capacity gain achieved by the C-MC and R-MC strategies. Additionally, we clarify that our analysis allows us to determine the optimal density of APs in order to maximize the capacity gain.