A survey on hybrid beamforming techniques in 5G : architecture and system model perspectives

The increasing wireless data traffic demands have driven the need to explore suitable spectrum regions for meeting the projected requirements. In the light of this, millimeter wave (mmWave) communication has received considerable attention from the research community. Typically, in fifth generation (5G) wireless networks, mmWave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications is realized by the hybrid transceivers which combine high dimensional analog phase shifters and power amplifiers with lower-dimensional digital signal processing units. This hybrid beamforming design reduces the cost and power consumption which is aligned with an energy-efficient design vision of 5G. In this paper, we track the progress in hybrid beamforming for massive MIMO communications in the context of system models of the hybrid transceivers' structures, the digital and analog beamforming matrices with the possible antenna configuration scenarios and the hybrid beamforming in heterogeneous wireless networks. We extend the scope of the discussion by including resource management issues in hybrid beamforming. We explore the suitability of hybrid beamforming methods, both, existing and proposed till first quarter of 2017, and identify the exciting future challenges in this domain

Resource allocation for transmit hybrid beamforming in decoupled millimeter wave multiuser-MIMO downlink

This paper presents a study on joint radio resource allocation and hybrid precoding in multicarrier massive multiple-input multiple-output communications for 5G cellular networks. In this paper, we present the resource allocation algorithm to maximize the proportional fairness (PF) spectral efficiency under the per subchannel power and the beamforming rank constraints. Two heuristic algorithms are designed. The proportional fairness hybrid beamforming algorithm provides the transmit precoder with a proportional fair spectral efficiency among users for the desired number of radio-frequency (RF) chains. Then, we transform the number of RF chains or rank constrained optimization problem into convex semidefinite programming (SDP) problem, which can be solved by standard techniques. Inspired by the formulated convex SDP problem, a low-complexity, two-step, PF-relaxed optimization algorithm has been provided for the formulated convex optimization problem. Simulation results show that the proposed suboptimal solution to the relaxed optimization problem is near-optimal for the signal-to-noise ratio SNR <= 10 dB and has a performance gap not greater than 2.33 b/s/Hz within the SNR range 0-25 dB. It also outperforms the maximum throughput and PF-based hybrid beamforming schemes for sum spectral efficiency, individual spectral efficiency, and fairness index