scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wireless Backhaul and Access in Small Cell Networks

TL;DR: This paper proposes the use of outdoor millimeter wave communications for backhaul networking between cells and mobile access within a cell, and proposes an efficient beam alignment technique using adaptive subspace sampling and hierarchical beam codebooks.
Abstract: Recently, there has been considerable interest in new tiered network cellular architectures, which would likely use many more cell sites than found today. Two major challenges will be i) providing backhaul to all of these cells and ii) finding efficient techniques to leverage higher frequency bands for mobile access and backhaul. This paper proposes the use of outdoor millimeter wave communications for backhaul networking between cells and mobile access within a cell. To overcome the outdoor impairments found in millimeter wave propagation, this paper studies beamforming using large arrays. However, such systems will require narrow beams, increasing sensitivity to movement caused by pole sway and other environmental concerns. To overcome this, we propose an efficient beam alignment technique using adaptive subspace sampling and hierarchical beam codebooks. A wind sway analysis is presented to establish a notion of beam coherence time. This highlights a previously unexplored tradeoff between array size and wind-induced movement. Generally, it is not possible to use larger arrays without risking a corresponding performance loss from wind-induced beam misalignment. The performance of the proposed alignment technique is analyzed and compared with other search and alignment methods. The results show significant performance improvement with reduced search time.
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper discusses all of these topics, identifying key challenges for future research and preliminary 5G standardization activities, while providing a comprehensive overview of the current literature, and in particular of the papers appearing in this special issue.
Abstract: What will 5G be? What it will not be is an incremental advance on 4G. The previous four generations of cellular technology have each been a major paradigm shift that has broken backward compatibility. Indeed, 5G will need to be a paradigm shift that includes very high carrier frequencies with massive bandwidths, extreme base station and device densities, and unprecedented numbers of antennas. However, unlike the previous four generations, it will also be highly integrative: tying any new 5G air interface and spectrum together with LTE and WiFi to provide universal high-rate coverage and a seamless user experience. To support this, the core network will also have to reach unprecedented levels of flexibility and intelligence, spectrum regulation will need to be rethought and improved, and energy and cost efficiencies will become even more critical considerations. This paper discusses all of these topics, identifying key challenges for future research and preliminary 5G standardization activities, while providing a comprehensive overview of the current literature, and in particular of the papers appearing in this special issue.

7,139 citations


Cites background from "Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wir..."

  • ...We begin with the most fundamental aspect of the physical layer—the waveform—and then consider the evolution of cloud-based and virtualized network architectures, latency and control signaling, and energy efficiency....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
05 Feb 2014
TL;DR: Measurements and capacity studies are surveyed to assess mmW technology with a focus on small cell deployments in urban environments and it is shown that mmW systems can offer more than an order of magnitude increase in capacity over current state-of-the-art 4G cellular networks at current cell densities.
Abstract: Millimeter-wave (mmW) frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz are a new frontier for cellular communication that offers the promise of orders of magnitude greater bandwidths combined with further gains via beamforming and spatial multiplexing from multielement antenna arrays. This paper surveys measurements and capacity studies to assess this technology with a focus on small cell deployments in urban environments. The conclusions are extremely encouraging; measurements in New York City at 28 and 73 GHz demonstrate that, even in an urban canyon environment, significant non-line-of-sight (NLOS) outdoor, street-level coverage is possible up to approximately 200 m from a potential low-power microcell or picocell base station. In addition, based on statistical channel models from these measurements, it is shown that mmW systems can offer more than an order of magnitude increase in capacity over current state-of-the-art 4G cellular networks at current cell densities. Cellular systems, however, will need to be significantly redesigned to fully achieve these gains. Specifically, the requirement of highly directional and adaptive transmissions, directional isolation between links, and significant possibilities of outage have strong implications on multiple access, channel structure, synchronization, and receiver design. To address these challenges, the paper discusses how various technologies including adaptive beamforming, multihop relaying, heterogeneous network architectures, and carrier aggregation can be leveraged in the mmW context.

2,452 citations


Cites background from "Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wir..."

  • ...This tremendous potential has led to considerable recent interest in mmW cellular both in industry [7]–[9], [18], [19] and academia [20]–[26], with a growing belief that mmW bands will play a significant role in beyond 4G and 5G cellular systems [27]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An adaptive algorithm to estimate the mmWave channel parameters that exploits the poor scattering nature of the channel is developed and a new hybrid analog/digital precoding algorithm is proposed that overcomes the hardware constraints on the analog-only beamforming, and approaches the performance of digital solutions.
Abstract: Millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular systems will enable gigabit-per-second data rates thanks to the large bandwidth available at mmWave frequencies. To realize sufficient link margin, mmWave systems will employ directional beamforming with large antenna arrays at both the transmitter and receiver. Due to the high cost and power consumption of gigasample mixed-signal devices, mmWave precoding will likely be divided among the analog and digital domains. The large number of antennas and the presence of analog beamforming requires the development of mmWave-specific channel estimation and precoding algorithms. This paper develops an adaptive algorithm to estimate the mmWave channel parameters that exploits the poor scattering nature of the channel. To enable the efficient operation of this algorithm, a novel hierarchical multi-resolution codebook is designed to construct training beamforming vectors with different beamwidths. For single-path channels, an upper bound on the estimation error probability using the proposed algorithm is derived, and some insights into the efficient allocation of the training power among the adaptive stages of the algorithm are obtained. The adaptive channel estimation algorithm is then extended to the multi-path case relying on the sparse nature of the channel. Using the estimated channel, this paper proposes a new hybrid analog/digital precoding algorithm that overcomes the hardware constraints on the analog-only beamforming, and approaches the performance of digital solutions. Simulation results show that the proposed low-complexity channel estimation algorithm achieves comparable precoding gains compared to exhaustive channel training algorithms. The results illustrate that the proposed channel estimation and precoding algorithms can approach the coverage probability achieved by perfect channel knowledge even in the presence of interference.

2,424 citations


Cites background or methods from "Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wir..."

  • ...Before delving into the details of the algorithm, we will focus in the following section on the design of a multi-resolution beamforming codebook which is essential for the proper operation of the adaptive channel estimation algorithm....

    [...]

  • ...To simplify explaining the codebook structure and design, we focus on the design of the BS training precoding codebook ; a similar approach can be followed to construct the MS training codebook ....

    [...]

  • ...Directional precoding with large antenna arrays appears to be inevitable to support longer outdoor links and to provide sufficient received signal power....

    [...]

  • ...This motivates developing multi-path mmWave channel estimation algorithms, which enable hybrid precoding to approach the performance of the digital precoding algorithms....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article provides an overview of signal processing challenges in mmWave wireless systems, with an emphasis on those faced by using MIMO communication at higher carrier frequencies.
Abstract: Communication at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies is defining a new era of wireless communication. The mmWave band offers higher bandwidth communication channels versus those presently used in commercial wireless systems. The applications of mmWave are immense: wireless local and personal area networks in the unlicensed band, 5G cellular systems, not to mention vehicular area networks, ad hoc networks, and wearables. Signal processing is critical for enabling the next generation of mmWave communication. Due to the use of large antenna arrays at the transmitter and receiver, combined with radio frequency and mixed signal power constraints, new multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication signal processing techniques are needed. Because of the wide bandwidths, low complexity transceiver algorithms become important. There are opportunities to exploit techniques like compressed sensing for channel estimation and beamforming. This article provides an overview of signal processing challenges in mmWave wireless systems, with an emphasis on those faced by using MIMO communication at higher carrier frequencies.

2,380 citations


Cites background from "Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wir..."

  • ...The case of a one-bit ADC is especially interesting as it has negligible power consumption compared to other components in the front-end (a one-bit ADC at ultra-high sampling rate of 240 GS/s consumes around 10 mW [135])....

    [...]

  • ...The development of wireless communication in the 60 GHz unlicensed band was the topic of tremendous amounts of research [5]– [13]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper establishes that if the number of RF chains is twice the total number of data streams, the hybrid beamforming structure can realize any fully digital beamformer exactly, regardless of the numberOf antenna elements, and shows that such an architecture can approach the performance of a fully digital scheme with much fewer number ofRF chains.
Abstract: The potential of using of millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency for future wireless cellular communication systems has motivated the study of large-scale antenna arrays for achieving highly directional beamforming. However, the conventional fully digital beamforming methods which require one radio frequency (RF) chain per antenna element is not viable for large-scale antenna arrays due to the high cost and high power consumption of RF chain components in high frequencies. To address the challenge of this hardware limitation, this paper considers a hybrid beamforming architecture in which the overall beamformer consists of a low-dimensional digital beamformer followed by an RF beamformer implemented using analog phase shifters. Our aim is to show that such an architecture can approach the performance of a fully digital scheme with much fewer number of RF chains. Specifically, this paper establishes that if the number of RF chains is twice the total number of data streams, the hybrid beamforming structure can realize any fully digital beamformer exactly, regardless of the number of antenna elements. For cases with fewer number of RF chains, this paper further considers the hybrid beamforming design problem for both the transmission scenario of a point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system and a downlink multi-user multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) system. For each scenario, we propose a heuristic hybrid beamforming design that achieves a performance close to the performance of the fully digital beamforming baseline. Finally, the proposed algorithms are modified for the more practical setting in which only finite resolution phase shifters are available. Numerical simulations show that the proposed schemes are effective even when phase shifters with very low resolution are used.

1,178 citations

References
More filters
Book
01 Jan 1983

25,017 citations

Book
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a multiuser communication architecture for point-to-point wireless networks with additive Gaussian noise detection and estimation in the context of MIMO networks.
Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The wireless channel 3. Point-to-point communication: detection, diversity and channel uncertainty 4. Cellular systems: multiple access and interference management 5. Capacity of wireless channels 6. Multiuser capacity and opportunistic communication 7. MIMO I: spatial multiplexing and channel modeling 8. MIMO II: capacity and multiplexing architectures 9. MIMO III: diversity-multiplexing tradeoff and universal space-time codes 10. MIMO IV: multiuser communication A. Detection and estimation in additive Gaussian noise B. Information theory background.

8,084 citations

Book
30 Nov 1993
TL;DR: Details of Element Pattern and Mutual Impedance Effects for Phased Arrays and Special Array Feeds for Limited Field of View and Wideband Arrays are presented.
Abstract: Phased Arrays in Radar and Communication Systems. Pattern Characteristics and Synthesis of Linear and Planar Arrays. Patterns of Nonplanar Arrays. Elements, Transmission Lines, and Feed Architectures for Phased Arrays. Summary of Element Pattern and Mutual Impedance Effects. Array Error Effects. Special Array Feeds for Limited Field of View and Wideband Arrays.

2,233 citations


"Millimeter Wave Beamforming for Wir..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...The employment of digitally controlled analog beamforming and combining causes a variety of practical limitations that we mathematically model [19], [20]....

    [...]

  • ...Flattened omni-directional beams can be generated using techniques such as the subarray method in [27], which also employs beam-spoiling techniques similar to [20], [28]....

    [...]

Book
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: Optimum array processing: part IV of detection, estimation and modulation theory, Optimum arrayprocessing: part III of detection- estimation-modulation theory.
Abstract: Optimum array processing: part IV of detection, estimation and modulation theory , Optimum array processing: part IV of detection, estimation and modulation theory , مرکز فناوری اطلاعات و اطلاع رسانی کشاورزی

2,160 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A quantized maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) beamforming technique is proposed where the receiver only sends the label of the best beamforming vector in a predetermined codebook to the transmitter.
Abstract: Transmit beamforming and receive combining are simple methods for exploiting the significant diversity that is available in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems. Unfortunately, optimal performance requires either complete channel knowledge or knowledge of the optimal beamforming vector; both are hard to realize. In this article, a quantized maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) beamforming technique is proposed where the receiver only sends the label of the best beamforming vector in a predetermined codebook to the transmitter. By using the distribution of the optimal beamforming vector in independent and identically distributed Rayleigh fading matrix channels, the codebook design problem is solved and related to the problem of Grassmannian line packing. The proposed design criterion is flexible enough to allow for side constraints on the codebook vectors. Bounds on the codebook size are derived to guarantee full diversity order. Results on the density of Grassmannian line packings are derived and used to develop bounds on the codebook size given a capacity or SNR loss. Monte Carlo simulations are presented that compare the probability of error for different quantization strategies.

1,542 citations