A Survey on the Effects of Human Blockage on the Performance of mmWave Communication Systems

Human blockage is one of the key challenges that limit the ability of mmWave communications to provide ultrahigh data rate and ultra-low latency links, thus severely reducing the quality-of-service (QoS) experienced by the users. In this paper, we present the most common human body blockage models, which are used in blockage analysis to predict the level of attenuation caused by the human body to mmWave signals. Moreover, the main parameters of human blockage which affect the received signal are discussed, while the effect of blockage on the received signal and network coverage is analyzed. Finally, we provide insights to potential solutions that overcome human blockage, in order to further improve the overall performance of mmWave communications.