Advanced Integration Techniques on Broadband Millimeter-Wave Beam Steering for 5G Wireless Networks and Beyond

Abstract

Recently, the desired very high throughput of 5G wireless networks drives millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication into practical applications. A phased array technique is required to increase the effective antenna aperture at mm-wave frequency. Integrated solutions of beamforming/beam steering are extremely attractive for practical implementations. After a discussion on the basic principles of radio beam steering, we review and explore the recent advanced integration techniques of silicon-based electronic integrated circuits (EICs), photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and antenna-on-chip (AoC). For EIC, the latest advanced designs of on-chip true time delay (TTD) are explored. Even with such advances, the fundamental loss of a silicon-based EIC still exists, which can be solved by advanced PIC solutions with ultra-broad bandwidth and low loss. Advanced PIC designs for mm-wave beam steering are then reviewed with emphasis on an optical TTD. Different from the mature silicon-based EIC, the photonic integration technology for PIC is still under development. In this paper, we review and explore the potential photonic integration platforms and discuss how a monolithic integration based on photonic membranes fits the photonic mm-wave beam steering application, especially for the ease of EIC and PIC integration on a single chip. To combine EIC, for its accurate and mature fabrication techniques, with PIC, for its ultra-broad bandwidth and low loss, a hierarchical mm-wave beam steering chip with large-array Manuscript delays realized in PIC and sub-array delays realized in EIC can be a future-proof solution. Moreover, the antenna units can be further integrated on such a chip using AoC techniques. Among the mentioned techniques, the integration trends on device and system levels are discussed extensively.Index Terms-5G, millimeter-wave, beam steering, true-timedelay, phase shifter, antenna-on-chip, photonic radio beam steering, broadband beamforming, phase control units. 0018-9197

Joint Space-Time Block-Coding and Beamforming for the Multiuser Radio Over Plastic Fiber Downlink

“…Optical fiber aided wireless beamforming is attractive compared to its electronic phase shifter assisted counterpart, especially once fiber in the home (FITH) relying on lowcost plastic optical fiber becomes a reality [1], [2]. Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) is regarded as a strong candidate for future indoor communication systems, since it provides a lowcost solution to indoor communications due to its convenient installation [1].…”

“…A number of challenges are imposed by the current MF-MIMO aided indoor networking techniques, which can be summarised as follows: 1) State-of-the-art beamforming techniques mainly rely on invoking phase shifters in the transceiver, which impose a high insertion loss [2]. 2) Numerous phase shifters are needed for beamforming in large-scale MF-MIMO systems, such as Layered Steered Space-Time Codes (LSSTC) and Layered Steered Space-Time Spreading (LSSTS) [4], [7].…”

“…Therefore, the complexity of the MF-MIMO configuration can be substantially reduced by avoiding bulky phase shifters [10]. The optical solution is capable of reducing the loss imposed by an electronic phase shifter and significantly simplifies the wireless beamforming [2]. As for the third challenge, a single optical double-sideband (ODSB) modulation solution was proposed in [11] for simplifying the system by encoding the related pair of signals into two different side bands of an ODSB signal using optical up-conversion.…”

Membrane-Based Receiver/Transmitter for Reconfigurable Optical Wireless Beam-Steering Systems

“…According to the ANZI Z-136 and IEC 60825-1 eye safety standards, the lasers at IR wavelength (1400nm-4000nm) are allowed to emit > 200 times more optical power as compared to visible wavelengths. Steering of a highly concentrated optical beam is of particular interest in in-door applications, providing secure and high capacity link [1]. 2D optical beam steering has been demonstrated recently by various techniques, for instance, wavelength-assisted pencil beams [2] and compact grating array [3].…”

Performance evaluation of optical beamforming-based wideband antenna array (Invited Paper)

“…Thanks to the intrinsic advantage of large instantaneous bandwidth brought by optical technologies, broadband and large-range true time delay (TTD) can be easily implemented in the optical domain [8][9][10][11][12] . Thus, complex waveforms with larger instantaneous bandwidth can be applied, which enables distinctive features such as better resolution for ranging [13] , larger suppression of grating lobes [14,15] , and higher speed in wireless communications [16,17] . For the optical beamforming-based wideband antenna array, it is of great importance to know what the output signal at an arbitrary radiation direction is for a given wideband input signal.…”