Constant envelope transceivers in millimetre-wave massive MIMO: EVM and link budget considerations

RF 30 GHz ray-tracing simulation results are presented from a conceptual Massive-Multiple Input Multiple Output (M-MIMO) propagation model in an urban canyon. The usage of Constant Envelope (CE) RF signals is evaluated in both propagation ray-rich and ray-sparse scenarios. Multiple mobile terminals are simulated each employing single carrier Phase Shift Keying (PSK). It is found that once an operational link budget is achieved CE transmitters have negligible effect on a received Error Vector Magnitude (EVM). Finally it is found that the EVM is a function of both richness of propagation rays as well as the relative proximities of mobile users. A worst-case EVM of circa 25% is observed when terminals are separated by 1m reducing to circa 5% when terminals are separated by more than 4m

Subspace Tracking and Least Squares Approaches to Channel Estimation in Millimeter Wave Multiuser MIMO

The problem of MIMO channel estimation at millimeter wave frequencies, both in a single-user and in a multi-user setting, is tackled in this paper. Using a subspace approach, we develop a protocol enabling the estimation of the right (resp. left) singular vectors at the transmitter (resp. receiver) side; then, we adapt the projection approximation subspace tracking with deflation and the orthogonal Oja algorithms to our framework and obtain two channel estimation algorithms. We also present an alternative algorithm based on the least squares approach. The hybrid analog/digital nature of the beamformer is also explicitly taken into account at the algorithm design stage. In order to limit the system complexity, a fixed analog beamformer is used at both sides of the communication links. The obtained numerical results, showing the accuracy in the estimation of the channel matrix dominant singular vectors, the system achievable spectral efficiency, and the system bit-error-rate, prove that the proposed algorithms are effective, and that they compare favorably, in terms of the performance-complexity trade-off, with respect to several competing alternatives.Comment: To appear on the IEEE Transactions on Communication