A High-Precision Hybrid Analog and Digital Beamforming Transceiver System for 5G Millimeter-Wave Communication

Abstract

In this paper, the development of a millimeter-wave hybrid beamforming (HBF) transceiver system for 5G millimeter-wave multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication is presented. The developed transceiver system is operated at 28-GHz band in the time division duplex (TDD) mode, with 500-MHz signal bandwidth. To implement high beamforming accuracy, a phased-array-based HBF transceiver with high-precision phase shifting network (PSN) at intermediate-frequency (IF)-paths is proposed. The designed PSN has 8-bit phase resolution within 360 • range and 0.13-dB amplitude variation. With the use of such low-cost 8-bit PSN, this HBF transceiver system achieves 0.6 • beam resolution and a good RF transceiver performance. In addition, under the over-the-air MIMO communication test with two data streams, the error vector magnitude (EVM) of the received signals at two user equipment (UE) is 2.58% and 2.34%. The high-data rate millimeter-wave communication and MIMO performance of this HBF are verified.

Full Snapshot Reconstruction in Hybrid Architecture Antenna Arrays

“…In both works, the MUSIC algorithm is applied in the reconstructed snapshots to estimate the unknown AoAs. It is pointed out, here, that, differently to [22] and more recent works [6], [25], [26] and [27] this paper summarizes and extends previous findings providing an alternative approach to the problem. Specifically, unlike previous works which focus on new AoA estimation techniques, in this work the key idea is to develop techniques which, based on the sampled output of a hybrid array, will reconstruct the snapshots that would have been captured using a conventional (non-hybrid) ULA.…”

Full Snapshot Reconstruction in Hybrid Architecture Antenna Arrays

“…In both works, the MUSIC algorithm is applied in the reconstructed snapshots to estimate the unknown AoAs. It is pointed out, here, that, differently to [23] and more recent works [6], [26], [27] and [28], this paper summarizes and extends previous findings, providing an alternative approach to the problem. Specifically, unlike previous works which focus on new AoA estimation techniques, in this work, the key idea is to develop techniques which, based on the sampled output of a hybrid array, will reconstruct the snapshots that would have been captured using a conventional (non-hybrid) ULA.…”

Beamformer development challenges for 5G and beyond

“…Also, in addition to mitigating path loss, high-directivity reference signaling in mmWave beamforming can provide an assist with scattered signals such that the non-line-of-sight links can also be leveraged. An example of a high-directivity practical beamformer at 28 GHz, which provides high accuracy and precise phase shifting is given in [28] (see Figure 10.5(a)). While an evaluation study on a beamforming (receiver) array is shown in Figure 10.5(b) with digital baseband processing given in [34] wherein accurate phase shifting in a large-scale array is evaluated ( Figure 10.6).…”

“…While an evaluation study on a beamforming (receiver) array is shown in Figure 10.5(b) with digital baseband processing given in [34] wherein accurate phase shifting in a large-scale array is evaluated ( Figure 10.6). Both systems in [28,34] are implementable with reference signaling [36] for mmWave channel estimation.…”

“…These limitations cause lens imperfections that end up creating spherical aberration, coma, chromatic aberration and astigmatism [40]. Regardless of the type of lens and the synthesis approach used in development, lens-based Photograph of front-end circuits in one phased sub-array hybrid analog and digital beamforming transceiver system [28] beamformers are found to work well in the mmWave spectrum range when deployed for massive antenna array operation at the radio front end [39]. According to the study and conclusion in [41], a lens-based beamformer simplifies the signal processing effectively by exploiting the mmWave channel's angular sparsity [42].…”