Ubiquitous Cell-Free Massive MIMO Communications

Since the first cellular networks were trialled in the 1970s, we have witnessed an incredible wireless revolution. From 1G to 4G, the massive traffic growth has been managed by a combination of wider bandwidths, refined radio interfaces, and network densification, namely increasing the number of antennas per site. Due its cost-efficiency, the latter has contributed the most. Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is a key 5G technology that uses massive antenna arrays to provide a very high beamforming gain and spatially multiplexing of users, and hence, increases the spectral and energy efficiency. It constitutes a centralized solution to densify a network, and its performance is limited by the inter-cell interference inherent in its cell-centric design. Conversely, ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO refers to a distributed Massive MIMO system implementing coherent user-centric transmission to overcome the inter-cell interference limitation in cellular networks and provide additional macro-diversity. These features, combined with the system scalability inherent in the Massive MIMO design, distinguishes ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO from prior coordinated distributed wireless systems. In this article, we investigate the enormous potential of this promising technology while addressing practical deployment issues to deal with the increased back/front-hauling overhead deriving from the signal co-processing.Comment: Published in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking on August 5, 201

28 GHz and 73 GHz Millimeter-Wave Indoor Propagation Measurements and Path Loss Models

This paper presents 28 GHz and 73 GHz millimeter- wave propagation measurements performed in a typical office environment using a 400 Megachip-per-second broadband sliding correlator channel sounder and highly directional steerable 15 dBi (30 degrees beamwidth) and 20 dBi (15 degrees beamwidth) horn antennas. Power delay profiles were acquired for 48 transmitter-receiver location combinations over distances ranging from 3.9 m to 45.9 m with maximum transmit powers of 24 dBm and 12.3 dBm at 28 GHz and 73 GHz, respectively. Directional and omnidirectional path loss models and RMS delay spread statistics are presented for line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight environments for both co- and cross-polarized antenna configurations. The LOS omnidirectional path loss exponents were 1.1 and 1.3 at 28 GHz and 73 GHz, and 2.7 and 3.2 in NLOS at 28 GHz and 73 GHz, respectively, for vertically-polarized antennas. The mean directional RMS delay spreads were 18.4 ns and 13.3 ns, with maximum values of 193 ns and 288 ns at 28 GHz and 73 GHz, respectively.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), ICC Workshop

Millimeter-wave communication for a last-mile autonomous transport vehicle

Low-speed autonomous transport of passengers and goods is expected to have a strong, positive impact on the reliability and ease of travelling. Various advanced functions of the involved vehicles rely on the wireless exchange of information with other vehicles and the roadside infrastructure, thereby benefitting from the low latency and high throughput characteristics that 5G technology has to offer. This work presents an investigation of 5G millimeter-wave communication links for a low-speed autonomous vehicle, focusing on the effects of the antenna positions on both the received signal quality and the link performance. It is observed that the excess loss for communication with roadside infrastructure in front of the vehicle is nearly half-power beam width independent, and the increase of the root mean square delay spread plays a minor role in the resulting signal quality, as the absolute times are considerably shorter than the typical duration of 5G New Radio symbols. Near certain threshold levels, a reduction of the received power affects the link performance through an increased error vector magnitude of the received signal, and subsequent decrease of the achieved data throughput