Analog Beamforming for mmW Circular Arrays with Limited Number of RF Chains

Petteri Kela, Mário Costa, Kari Leppanen, Riku Jäntti

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference article in proceedingsScientificpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Millimeter wave (mmW) communication has been viewed as a way of offloading users from lower frequencies, where currently deployed cellular networks operate. The short wavelength of mmW frequencies allows for electrically large arrays to be deployed in small mobile devices. Electrically large arrays (in terms of wavelength) are needed in order to compensate for the high signal attenuation in mmW frequencies by means of transmit-receive beamforming. Two beamforming architectures are typically considered in practice, namely a fully digital solution in which every antenna has a dedicated radio frequency (RF) chain, and a so-called hybrid solution that consists of an analog beamforming stage prior to digital beamforming. Hybrid beamforming trades-off the versatility of a fully digital architecture for lower power-consumption and cost. In this paper we focus on fully analog beamforming architectures for circular arrays comprised of patch antennas. In particular, we propose two architectures for analog beamforming with circular arrays, and provide a detailed study regarding the number of simultaneously active beams (i.e, number of RF chains), the amount of antennas per beam, as well as the number of required phase-shifters. The proposed analog beamforming scheme is compared to a fully digital beamforming approach on a realistic 5G system level platform simulating an urban environment. Results show that the performance of the proposed analog beamforming architecture is comparable to that of a fully digital beamforming scheme in terms of user throughput. © 2018 IEEE.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
PublisherIEEE
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781538663585
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018
MoE publication typeA4 Conference publication
EventIEEE Vehicular Technology Conference - Chicago, United States
Duration: 27 Aug 201830 Aug 2018
Conference number: 88
http://www.ieeevtc.org/vtc2018fall/accepted_papers.pdf

Publication series

NameIEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
ISSN (Electronic)2577-2465

Conference

ConferenceIEEE Vehicular Technology Conference
Abbreviated titleVTC Fall
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityChicago
Period27/08/201830/08/2018
Internet address

Keywords

  • 5G
  • beamforming
  • mmW
  • NR
  • ultra-dense network

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  • TAKE-5 - Jäntti

    Jäntti, R. (Principal investigator)

    01/10/201531/12/2018

    Project: Business Finland: Other research funding

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