RF system for mmWave massive MIMO

Abstract: Due to rapid developments in communication technology, it is likely that 5G networks will be rolled out in 2019. To adapt to 5G, hardware will have to develop to meet the requirements of this new technology. The mmWave communication is one of the main elements of 5G technology. The mmWave frequency bandwidth is used to carry the data links and can achieve a higher transmission data rate than the current LTE system. There are few continuous frequency resources under 3GHz that can be allocated. As such, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the 3GPP organization mutually agree that the mmWave is the most suitable option for exploring new frequency resources. However, the mmWave has the one key weakness: high path loss for short transmission range. To compensate for this negative effect, a massive MIMO system can be used to have spatial multiplexing gains and array an-tenna gains. This article seeks a method that can acknowledge the funda-mental concepts and requirements of the mmWave massive MIMO system, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. In order to find proof of the concepts, the practical limitations, and the guild of the real design, a prototype of the system has been built. The current industry standard when creating a prototype is to use PCB. We will develop our system proposals from the prototype. To do so we use the evaluation boards to test system level performances such as link budget and identifying the most suitable components etc. Then in the PCB design, we integrate the radio frequency of the mmWave system. This has the scalability to collaborate with massive MIMO system test-bed to observe the system level performance. Finally, to verify our methods, we carry out experiments on both component level and system level in order to identify the feasibility of the prototype system. The performance of each individual component is tested using an evaluation board. Separate tests are performed for both transmitting (Tx) and receiving (Rx) chains. Finally, over-air-tests are conducted at the sys-tem level to evaluate the performance of our design