CUNEC: A Path Loss Model for Urban Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks
arXiv:2511.22041 · doi:10.1109/TWC.2025.3634270
Abstract
Accurate path loss (PL) modeling is essential for evaluating and optimizing cell-free massive MIMO systems, especially in dense urban environments where traditional models fail to capture the complexity of real-world propagation. This paper introduces CUNEC (Cell-free massive MIMO for Urban Non-stationary Environments with Correlations, a novel PL model that accounts for spatial non-stationarity, inter-access point (AP)/user equipment (UE) correlations, and urban-specific propagation phenomena such as corner diffraction and street canyon waveguiding.bCUNEC segments AP-UE paths by street order, models PL as a stochastic function of urban geometry, and integrates spatially correlated shadowing. The parameters are derived from large-scale ray tracing and validated against both additional ray tracing in New York, NY and real-world channel measurements in Los Angeles, CA. Compared to the conventional alpha-beta model, CUNEC significantly improves accuracy in the considered urban propagation scenarios. An open-source dataset comprising over 30,000 AP locations and 128 UE positions is also released to support reproducible research and future system development.
Accepted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Final version is 15 pages and includes 7 figures and 5 tables