volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Hybrid beamforming systems are a cost and energy efficient architectural approach for large-scale antenna arrays operating at millimetre-wave frequencies. The separation of the beamforming process into an analogue beamforming network and a digital precoding part enables the reduction of digital channels, while preserving a precise beam steering capability. Especially subarray-based hybrid beamforming systems distinguish them due to a low complex analogue beamforming network. However, to determine the ideal analogue and digital precoding matrices the channel state information has to be estimated. This estimation process is hampered by the electrical interconnection of different antenna elements within the analogue beamforming network. Hence, a separation of the antenna elements of the subarrays in the digital domain is not possible. Furthermore, actual channel estimation methods for hybrid beamforming systems are based on beam training techniques, which suffer from long estimation times. To overcome these problems we developed a two-stage channel estimation method for subarraybased hybrid beamforming systems using sparse array estimations. In the first stage, only one antenna element of each subarray at the transmitter is active during the channel estimation, resulting in a sparse array estimation. To distinguish the transmitters at the receiver side the transmitters are separated in the frequency domain using different orthogonal frequency division multiplexing subcarriers. For recovering the full-dimensional channel matrix we present two algorithms. The first algorithm is based on a two-dimensional interpolation of the channel matrix, while the second algorithm uses multiple subsequent channel measurements. The presented estimation method enables thereby a direct determination of the channel matrix with only one or a few measurements.

1. Pi, Z. and F. Khan, "An introduction to millimeter-wave mobile broadband systems," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 49, No. 6, 101-107, Jun. 2011.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2011.5783993 Google Scholar

2. Sun, S., T. S. Rappaport, R. W. Heath, A. Nix, and S. Rangan, "MIMO for millimeter-wave wireless communications: Beamforming, spatial multiplexing, or both?," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 52, No. 12, 110-121, Dec. 2014.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2014.6979962 Google Scholar

3. Federal Communications Commission "FCC takes steps to facilitate mobile broadband and next generation wireless technologies in spectrum above 24 GHz,", 2016. Google Scholar

4. Bjornson, E., E. G. Larsson, and T. L. Marzetta, "Massive MIMO: Ten myths and one critical question," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 54, No. 2, 114-123, Feb. 2016.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2016.7402270 Google Scholar

5. Rusek, F., D. Persson, B. K. Lau, E. G. Larsson, T. L. Marzetta, O. Edfors, and F. Tufvesson, "Scaling up MIMO: Opportunities and challenges with very large arrays," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Vol. 30, No. 1, 40-60, Jan. 2013.
doi:10.1109/MSP.2011.2178495 Google Scholar

6. Swindlehurst, A., E. Ayanoglu, P. Heydari, and F. Capolino, "Millimeter-wave massive MIMO: The next wireless revolution?," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 52, No. 9, 56-62, 2014.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2014.6894453 Google Scholar

7. Roh, W., J. Y. Seol, J. H. Park, B. Lee, J. Lee, Y. Kim, J. Cho, K. Cheun, and F. Aryanfar, "Millimeter-wave beamforming as an enabling technology for 5G cellular communications: Theoretical feasibility and prototype results," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 52, No. 2, 106-113, Feb. 2014.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2014.6736750 Google Scholar

8. Akdeniz, M. R., Y. Liu, M. K. Samimi, S. Sun, S. Rangan, T. S. Rappaport, and E. Erkip, "Millimeter wave channel modeling and cellular capacity evaluation," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 32, No. 6, 1164-1179, 2014.
doi:10.1109/JSAC.2014.2328154 Google Scholar

9. Andrews, J. G., S. Buzzi, W. Choi, S. V. Hanly, A. Lozano, A. C. Soong, and J. C. Zhang, "What will 5G be?," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 32, No. 6, 1065-1082, Jun. 2014.
doi:10.1109/JSAC.2014.2328098 Google Scholar

10. Larsson, E. G., O. Edfors, F. Tufvesson, and T. L. Marzetta, "Massive MIMO for next generation wireless systems," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 52, No. 2, 186-195, Feb. 2014.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2014.6736761 Google Scholar

11. Heath, R. W., "Millimeter wave: The future of commercial wireless systems," Technical Digest --- IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium, CSIC, Vol. 2016-Novem, 1-4, IEEE, Oct. 2016. Google Scholar

12. Molisch, A. F., V. V. Ratnam, S. Han, Z. Li, S. L. H. Nguyen, L. Li, and K. Haneda, "Hybrid beamforming for massive MIMO: A survey," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 55, No. 9, 134-141, 2017.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600400 Google Scholar

13. Sohrabi, F. and W. Yu, "Hybrid analog and digital beamforming for OFDM-based large-scale MIMO systems," IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, SPAWC, Vol. 2016-Augus, No. 978, 1-5, 2016. Google Scholar

14. Heath, R. W., N. Gonzalez-Prelcic, S. Rangan, W. Roh, and A. M. Sayeed, "An overview of signal processing techniques for millimeter wave MIMO systems," IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 10, No. 3, 436-453, Apr. 2016.
doi:10.1109/JSTSP.2016.2523924 Google Scholar

15. Donelli, M., T. Moriyama, and M. Manekiya, "A compact switched-beam planar antenna array for wireless sensors operating at Wi-Fi band," Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 83, 137-145, 2018.
doi:10.2528/PIERC18012004 Google Scholar

16. Sohrabi, F. and W. Yu, "Hybrid digital and analog beamforming design for large-scale antenna arrays," IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 10, No. 3, 501-513, Apr. 2016.
doi:10.1109/JSTSP.2016.2520912 Google Scholar

17. Park, S., A. Alkhateeb, and R. W. Heath, "Dynamic subarrays for hybrid precoding in wideband mmWave MIMO systems," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 16, No. 5, 2907-2920, May 2017.
doi:10.1109/TWC.2017.2671869 Google Scholar

18. Eisenbeis, J., M. Krause, T. Mahler, S. Scherr, and T. Zwick, "Path based MIMO channel model for hybrid beamforming architecture analysis," Accepted for publishing in Proceedings of the 11th German Microwave Conference (GeMiC), Freiburg, Mar. 12-14, 2018. Google Scholar

19. Song, N., T. Yang, and H. Sun, "Overlapped subarray based hybrid beamforming for millimeter wave multiuser massive MIMO," IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Vol. 24, No. 5, 550-554, May 2017.
doi:10.1109/LSP.2017.2681689 Google Scholar

20. Kim, J. and A. F. Molisch, "Fast millimeter-wave beam training with receive beamforming," Journal of Communications and Networks, Vol. 16, No. 5, 512-522, 2014.
doi:10.1109/JCN.2014.000090 Google Scholar

21. Xiao, Z., T. He, P. Xia, and X.-G. Xia, "Hierarchical codebook design for beamforming training in millimeter-wave communication," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 15, No. 5, 3380-3392, May 2016.
doi:10.1109/TWC.2016.2520930 Google Scholar

22. Alkhateeb, A., O. El Ayach, G. Leus, and R. W. Heath, "Channel estimation and hybrid precoding for millimeter wave cellular systems," IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 8, No. 5, 831-846, Oct. 2014.
doi:10.1109/JSTSP.2014.2334278 Google Scholar

23. Noh, S., M. D. Zoltowski, and D. J. Love, "Multi-resolution codebook and adaptive beamforming sequence design for millimeter wave beam alignment," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 16, No. 9, 5689-5701, Sep. 2017.
doi:10.1109/TWC.2017.2713357 Google Scholar

24. Kokshoorn, M., H. Chen, P. Wang, Y. Li, and B. Vucetic, "Millimeter wave MIMO channel estimation using overlapped beam patterns and rate adaptation," IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Vol. 65, No. 3, 601-616, 2017.
doi:10.1109/TSP.2016.2614488 Google Scholar

25. Zhao, L., D. W. K. Ng, and J. Yuan, "Multi-user precoding and channel estimation for hybrid millimeter wave systems," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 35, No. 7, 1576-1590, 2017.
doi:10.1109/JSAC.2017.2699378 Google Scholar

26. Gao, X., L. Dai, S. Han, C.-L. I, and R. W. Heath, "Energy-efficient hybrid analog and digital precoding for mmWave MIMO systems with large antenna arrays," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 34, No. 4, 998-1009, Apr. 2016.
doi:10.1109/JSAC.2016.2549418 Google Scholar

27. Ayach, O. E., S. Rajagopal, S. Abu-Surra, Z. Pi, and R. W. Heath, "Spatially sparse precoding in millimeter wave MIMO systems," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1499-1513, Mar. 2014.
doi:10.1109/TWC.2014.011714.130846 Google Scholar

28. Wu, X., D. Liu, and F. Yin, "Hybrid beamforming for multi-user massive MIMO systems," IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 6778, 2018. Google Scholar

29. Ni, W., X. Dong, and W. S. Lu, "Near-optimal hybrid processing for massive MIMO systems via matrix decomposition," IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Vol. 65, No. 15, 3922-3933, 2017.
doi:10.1109/TSP.2017.2699643 Google Scholar

30. Mahler, T., T. Deletoille, J. Frey, J. Kowalewski, and T. Zwick, "Applying antenna synthesis methods on a path based MIMO channel model for verification," 2017 47th European Microwave Conference (EuMC), Vol. 1, No. 2, 1349-1352, IEEE, Oct. 2017. Google Scholar

31. Proakis, J. and M. Salehi, Digital Communications, ser. McGraw-Hill International Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2008.

32. 3GPP "Technical specification: LTE; Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical channels and modulation; (Release 14),", ETSI TS 136 211, No. V14.3.0, Aug. 2017. Google Scholar

33. LAN/MAN Standards Committee IEEE Std 802.11ad-2012 (Amendment to IEEE Std 802.11-2012, as amended by IEEE Std 802.11ae-2012 and IEEE Std 802.11aa-2012), IEEE, 2012.

34. Mahler, T., J. Kowalewski, B. Nub, C. Richt, J. Mayer, and T. Zwick, "Channel measurement based antenna synthesis for mobile automotive MIMO communication systems," Progress In Electromagnetics Research B, Vol. 72, 1-16, 2017.
doi:10.2528/PIERB16081502 Google Scholar

35. Correia, L. M., D. Zeller, O. Blume, D. Ferling, Y. Jading, G. Auer, and L. Van Der Perre, "Challenges and enabling technologies for energy aware mobile radio networks," IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 48, No. 11, 66-72, Nov. 2010.
doi:10.1109/MCOM.2010.5621969 Google Scholar

36. Blumenstein, J., R. Marsalek, Z. Fedra, A. Prokes, and C. Mecklenbrauker, "Channel estimation method for OFDM in low SNR based on two-dimensional spreading," Wireless Personal Communications, Vol. 78, No. 1, 715-728, 2014.
doi:10.1007/s11277-014-1779-y Google Scholar

37. Shiu, D. S., G. J. Foschini, M. J. Gans, and J. M. Kahn, "Fading correlation and its effect on the capacity of multielement antenna systems," IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 48, No. 3, 502-513, 2000.
doi:10.1109/26.837052 Google Scholar

Mr. Joerg Eisenbeis

Dr. Tobias Mahler

Dr. Pablo Ramos Lopez

Dr. Thomas Zwick