Mobile Communications Beyond 52.6 GHz: Waveforms, Numerology, and Phase Noise Challenge

In this article, the first considerations for the 5G New Radio (NR) physical layer evolution to support beyond 52.6GHz communications are provided. In addition, the performance of both OFDM based and DFT-s-OFDM based networks are evaluated with special emphasis on the phase noise (PN) induced distortion. It is shown that DFT-s-OFDM is more robust against PN under 5G NR Release 15 assumptions, namely regarding the supported phase tracking reference signal (PTRS) designs, since it enables more effective PN mitigation directly in the time domain. To further improve the PN compensation capabilities, the PTRS design for DFT-s-OFDM is revised, while for the OFDM waveform a novel block PTRS structure is introduced, providing similar link performance as DFT-s-OFDM with enhanced PTRS design. We demonstrate that the existing 5G NR Release 15 solutions can be extended to support efficient mobile communications at 60GHz carrier frequency with the enhanced PTRS structures. In addition, DFT-s-OFDM based downlink for user data could be considered for beyond 52.6GHz communications to further improve system power efficiency and performance with higher order modulation and coding schemes. Finally, network link budget and cell size considerations are provided, showing that at certain bands with specific transmit power regulation, the cell size can eventually be downlink limited.Comment: This manuscript has been submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine (WCM). 8 pages, 4 figures, and 2 table

KEY FRONT-END CIRCUITS IN MILLIMETER-WAVE SILICON-BASED WIRELESS TRANSMITTERS FOR PHASED-ARRAY APPLICATIONS

Millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) phased arrays have been widely used in numerous wireless systems to perform beam forming and spatial filtering that can enhance the equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) for the transmitter (TX). Regarding the existing phased-array architectures, an mm-Wave transmitter includes several building blocks to perform the desired delivered power and phases for wireless communication. Power amplifier (PA) is the most important building block. It needs to offer several advantages, e.g., high efficiency, broadband operation and high linearity. With the recent escalation of interest in 5G wireless communication technologies, mm-Wave transceivers at the 5G frequency bands (e.g., 28 GHz, 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 60 GHz) have become an important topic in both academia and industry. Thus, PA design is a critical obstacle due to the challenges associated with implementing wideband, highly efficient and highly linear PAs at mm-Wave frequencies. In this dissertation, we present several PA design innovations to address the aforementioned challenges. Additionally, phase shifter (PS) also plays a key role in a phased-array system, since it governs the beam forming quality and steering capabilities. A high-performance phase shifter should achieve a low insertion loss, a wide phase shifting range, dense phase shift angles, and good input/output matching.Ph.D