  Due to its potential to support high data rates at low latency with
reasonable interference isolation, millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications has
emerged as a promising solution for wireless personal-area networks (WPAN) and
an enabler for emerging applications such as high-resolution untethered virtual
reality. At mmWave, signals are prone to blockage by objects in the
environment, including human bodies. Most mmWave systems utilize directional
antennas in order to overcome the significant path loss. In this paper, we
consider the effects of blockage and antenna directivity on the performance of
a mmWave WPAN. Similar to related work, we assume that the interferers are in
arbitrary locations and the blockages are drawn from a random point process.
However, unlike related work that assumes independent blocking, we carefully
account for the possibility of correlated blocking, which arises when two
interferers are close to each other and therefore an obstruction that blocks
the first interferer may likely block the second interferer. Closed form
expressions for the blockage correlation coefficient and the distribution of
the SINR are provided for the case of two dominant interferers and a fixed
number of blockages drawn from a binomial point process. Finally, the effects
of antenna directivity and the spatial randomness of the interferers are taken
into account, resulting in SINR curves that fully account for correlated
blocking, which are compared against curves that neglect correlation. The
results provide insight into the validity of the commonly held assumption of
independent blocking and the improved accuracy that can be obtained when the
blocking correlation is taken into account.
