Multi-gigabit microwave and millimeter-wave communications research at CSIRO

© 2014 IEEE. High speed and long range wireless backhauls are cost-effective alternatives to fibre networks and becoming more and more attractive as the demand for broadband wireless services grows rapidly in recent years. However, current commercially available wireless backhaul systems neither provide sufficiently high speed nor meet the requirements to achieve both high speed and long range at the same time with sufficiently low latency for targeted applications. Traditional microwave systems can achieve long transmission range, but the data rates are limited to a few hundred Mega bits per second only. Multi-Gigabit wireless communications can be achieved using millimetre-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands, especially the E-bands, but the practical transmission range is still a major weakness. In this paper, the state-of-the-art microwave and mm-wave technologies developed at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) are introduced to demonstrate CSIRO's technology leadership in multi-Gigabit wireless communications research and development. The technology trends in multi-Gigabit wireless communications are also discussed and various recently developed microwave and mm-wave systems are compared. It is hoped that this paper will stimulate further research interest and industry development

The world's fastest wireless backhaul radio A case study in industry-research collaboration

Fibre is commonly perceived to be the dominant transport mechanism for transferring data from access points back to a central office, where it is aggregated onto the core network. However, high speed and long range wireless backhaul remains a cost-effective alternative to fibre networks. In some areas, wireless backhaul is dominant and becoming more and more attractive. However, commercially available wireless backhaul systems do not meet the requirements for both high speed and long range at the same time with sufficiently low latency for some applications. Traditional microwave systems can achieve long transmission range, but the data rates are then limited to a few hundred megabits per second. Multi-gigabit per second wireless communications can be achieved using millimetre-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands, especially in E-band, but the practical transmission range has then always been a major weakness. In this article, the world's first 5Gbps radio solution' and the fastest commercial backhaul product - developed by EM Solutions Pty Ltd with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) - is described. As well as achieving a state-of-the-art data rate, other key design features include maximal path length, minimal latency, and constant antenna pointing under wind and tower vibration

Low-Complexity Digital Modem Implementation for High-Speed Point-To-Point Wireless Communications

© 2018 IEEE. A low-complexity digital modem is presented in this paper for achieving high-speed and wideband point-To-point (P2P) wireless communications. By combining multiple functionalities into the transmitter and receiver filters, the signal processing complexity in the digital baseband can be significantly reduced. The structures and the implementation using field programmable gate array (FPGA) for the transmitter and receiver filters are described in details. Pre-equalization for reducing the impact of practical channel frequency response can be easily incorporated into the transmitter filter structure. The experimental test results using a 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps) digital modem prototype demonstrate the satisfactory performance with low FPGA resource usage

Improving Bandwidth Efficiency in E-band Communication Systems

The allocation of a large amount of bandwidth by regulating bodies in the 70/80 GHz band, i.e., the E-band, has opened up new potentials and challenges for providing affordable and reliable Gigabit per second wireless point-to-point links. This article first reviews the available bandwidth and licensing regulations in the E-band. Subsequently, different propagation models, e.g., the ITU-R and Cane models, are compared against measurement results and it is concluded that to meet specific availability requirements, E-band wireless systems may need to be designed with larger fade margins compared to microwave systems. A similar comparison is carried out between measurements and models for oscillator phase noise. It is confirmed that phase noise characteristics, that are neglected by the models used for narrowband systems, need to be taken into account for the wideband systems deployed in the E-band. Next, a new multi-input multi-output (MIMO) transceiver design, termed continuous aperture phased (CAP)-MIMO, is presented. Simulations show that CAP-MIMO enables E-band systems to achieve fiber-optic like throughputs. Finally, it is argued that full-duplex relaying can be used to greatly enhance the coverage of E-band systems without sacrificing throughput, thus, facilitating their application in establishing the backhaul of heterogeneous networks.Comment: 16 pages, 6 Figures, Journal paper. IEEE Communication Magazine 201

Multi-Gigabit Radio System Demonstrators for Next Generation Mobile Networks

Driven by the exponential growth in mobile broadband subscriptions and mobile data traffic, transport capacity of mobile networks has to be enhanced accordingly, including wireless backhaul and the emerging fronthaul networks. Utilizing wide bandwidth is the most straightforward way to capacity upgrade. Millimeter-wave frequency bands with large available bandwidth offer the opportunities to realize high capacity wireless links. However, there are challenges associated with the radio link implementation. For example, wide bandwidth is required for components like low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, modulators and demodulators (modems). Another challenge is the signal quality degradation due to high frequency impairments. The solutions presented in the thesis are applicable to implementations based on commercially available hardware. Multi-gigabit modems are proposed using simple modulation differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK), which do not need carrier recovery and power hungry mixed signal devices. To improve spectral efficiency, a 16-QAM modem is designed with optimized hardware efficiency. This in turn relaxes the demand on the sampling rate of analog to digital converters (ADC) and the resource requirement on digital signal processing. As proof-of-concept demonstration, DQPSK modems are implemented and verified at 2.5 and 5 Gbps. A 5 Gbps radio system based on the hardware efficient 16-QAM modem is also demonstrated at 70/80 GHz (E-band). The presented modems and systems address challenges in applying wide bandwidth/high symbol rate to realizing high capacity. Moreover, it defines the baseline for further capacity enhancement when combined with high spectral efficiency techniques. Besides the mobile backhaul application, high capacity wireless links are required to support the mobile fronthaul as a new network segment, which connects a centralized baseband pool to distributed remote radio units. A data-rate adaptable DQPSK modem solution is proposed for digital wireless fronthaul to transmit multi-gigabit CPRI (common public radio interface). An E-band digital fronthaul link is implemented using this modem at 5 Gbps. To overcome the low bandwidth efficiency of the digital fronthaul, an analog fronthaul technology is introduced as an enabler for cost efficient and scalable fronthaul networks. An analog fronthaul link is demonstrated at E-band complemented with phase noise mitigation for 64-QAM LTE transmission

Harnessing the Potential of Optical Communications for the Metaverse

The Metaverse is a digital world that offers an immersive virtual experience. However, the Metaverse applications are bandwidth-hungry and delay-sensitive that require ultrahigh data rates, ultra-low latency, and hyper-intensive computation. To cater for these requirements, optical communication arises as a key pillar in bringing this paradigm into reality. We highlight in this paper the potential of optical communications in the Metaverse. First, we set forth Metaverse requirements in terms of capacity and latency; then, we introduce ultra-high data rates requirements for various Metaverse experiences. Then, we put forward the potential of optical communications to achieve these data rate requirements in backbone, backhaul, fronthaul, and access segments. Both optical fiber and optical wireless communication (OWC) technologies, as well as their current and future expected data rates, are detailed. In addition, we propose a comprehensive set of configurations, connectivity, and equipment necessary for an immersive Metaverse experience. Finally, we identify a set of key enablers and research directions such as analog neuromorphic optical computing, optical intelligent reflective surfaces (IRS), hollow core fiber (HCF), and terahertz (THz)

Hardware Solutions for High Data Rate Modems

The exponentially-growing mobile data traffic imposes significant demands on the capacity of the mobile network. Fiber optic and microwave links are two main solutions for the mobile backhaul network, which provides connectivity between radio base station (RBS) sites and the switch sites. As compared to fiber, a microwave solution is much easier to deploy, however, its capacity is lower. This thesis is devoted to the design and implementation of modems supporting high data rate transmission. This thesis includes the design and implementation of one MMIC-based on- /off- keying (OOK) modem and two FPGA-based differential phase shift keying (D-QPSK) modems. The OOK modem is designed for short-distance applications. The D-QPSK modems are made for high capacity microwave radio applications. The OOK modulator is implemented in a heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) process, and is capable of transmitting data at rate of 14 Gbps. The OOK demodulator is implemented in a metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (mHEMT) process with a detection range of 10 to 60 GHz. An OOK link is set up and 10 Gbps transmission is achieved. For the D-QPSK scheme, a 2.5 Gbps and a 5 Gbps D-QPSK modem are implemented with FPGAs and microwave components. Modifications at the modulator and demodulator are explained, which doubles the data rate of the D-QPSK modem. It also enables the possibility of scaling up to even higher data rates. A point-to-point radio is demonstrated by using such a modem and commercial E-band RF front-end components, which achieves 5 Gbps full-duplex data transmission