Hindawi

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

Volume 2018, Article ID 7852896, 9 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/7852896

Research Article
RF Driven 5G System Design for Centimeter Waves

Pekka Pirinen , Harri Pennanen, Ari Pouttu, Tommi Tuovinen, Nuutti Tervo,
Petri Luoto, Antti Roivainen, Aarno Pärssinen, and Matti Latva-aho
Centre for Wireless Communications, P.O. Box 4500, FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland

Correspondence should be addressed to Pekka Pirinen; pekka.pirinen@oulu.fi

Received 22 December 2017; Accepted 12 April 2018; Published 23 May 2018

Academic Editor: Shao-Yu Lien

Copyright © 2018 Pekka Pirinen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

5G system design is a complex process due to a great variety of applications and their diverse requirements. This article describes our
experiences in developing a centimeter waves mobile broadband concept satisfying future capacity requirements. The first step in
the process was the radio channel measurement campaign and statistical modeling. Then the link level design was performed tightly
together with the radio frequency (RF) implementation requirements to allow as large scalability of the air interface as possible. We
started the concept development at 10 GHz frequency band and during the project World Radiocommunication Conference 2015
selected somewhat higher frequencies as new candidates for 5G. Thus, the main learning was to gain insight of interdependencies
of different phenomena and find feasible combinations of techniques and parameter combinations that might actually work in
practice, not only in theory.

1. Introduction development manageable with limited resources, we decided

to have the main emphasis on the flexible and scalable
All mobile communication system generations have had a enhanced mobile broadband communications air interface
clear key application driver: 1G for analog voice, 2G for with a well-established orthogonal frequency-division multi-
digital voice and text messaging, 3G for multimedia and plexing (OFDM) waveform. An integral part of the work has
Internet connectivity, and 4G for true mobile broadband been a tight linkage to RF implementation issues and cross-
[1]. 5G needs to cooperate and internetwork seamlessly with checking the feasibility of different communications options
these legacy networks as long as they are in operation and simultaneously from the RF perspective. This kind of com-
provide added value to the ecosystem. Foreseen application prehensive view on the practical system concept development
areas for 5G are much broader than in earlier generations, and is far too often ignored and is therefore highlighted in this
therefore, such qualities as system parameter adaptation, scal- article.
ability, reconfigurability, virtualization, and self-organization Now, being aware of the World Radiocommunication
become necessities for 5G. Conference (WRC) 2015 decisions that the lowest beyond 6
This article overviews our approach to tackle the chal- GHz serious candidate frequencies have moved to above 24
lenge of moving to higher center frequencies and address GHz, the interest toward 10 GHz band is fading. However,
its implications to 5G system concept design. The starting irrespective of the actual center frequency many of the
point was to evaluate the new candidate frequencies in the lessons learned are common and transferrable to any concept
centimeter wave bands that were investigated in METIS development process when utilizing previously unexplored
project [2–5]. Our selection at that point was 10 GHz as spectral resources and planning a new ultra-scalable commu-
it was the lowest frequency and thereby it would be less nications platform.
risky and more predictable to go there than jump to much Our main contributions in this paper are as follows:
higher uncharted frequencies. Then we planned and com-
pleted some measurement campaigns to evaluate the prop- (i) Set performance targets and key metrics for 5G
agation characteristics at 10 GHz. Also, to keep the concept system design.
2 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

(ii) Provide high-level functional architecture of 5G net- (a) Control plane: < 10 ms to establish user plane.
work. (b) User plane: < 1 ms from the user to server.
(iii) Present large-scale parameters derived from per-
formed 10 GHz channel measurements. (6) Mobility:
(iv) Define flexible physical layer parameterization, sig- (a) Home and office, optimized for speeds < 5 km/h
naling, and multiaccess structure.
(b) Extreme mobility, speeds up to 500 km/h.
(v) Elaborate RF link budget, beamforming, and practical
implementation issues that are critical to 5G system (7) Coverage:
design and performance at centimeter waves.
(a) Indoor coverage up to 30 m.
The rest of the article discusses first various 5G use cases
and their respective system design objectives. Then, 5G sys- (b) Outdoor coverage up to 300 m.
tem concept design is described from the network architec- (c) Operation > 300 m using lower cm-wave fre-
ture viewpoint. The next two sections consider channel quencies.
measurements and modeling issues and link level design
issues. Implications of merging RF architecture design and Theoretical values for maximum data rates are calculated
considerations to the concept are presented next. Finally, with respect to the allocated spectrum in Section 5. The maxi-
some concluding remarks are given. mum multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration
set for 5G system concept is 256 × 16 with the maximum
2. Use Cases and System Design Targets number of 16 data streams. If this MIMO deployment can be
achieved, the maximum spectrum efficiency level may be up
A fully evolved 5G system needs to support diverse appli- to 100 bit/s/Hz given that 256QAM (quadrature amplitude
cation areas such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), modulation) is used. 256QAM requires error vector mag-
massive Internet of things (MIoT), and mission-critical com- nitude (EVM) levels of −33 dB, which sets rather stringent
munications (MCC) [1]. All these use cases have distinct and design targets for RF chain designs. The RF architecture
partly contradictory requirements in terms of their key per- aspects of 5G system concept are discussed in Section 6. One
formance indicators, making the system concept design, as a key target of 5G system is to define signaling structures, which
whole, extremely complex. In most of the cases, not all of the enable very low delays in data transmission. The 5G systems
requirements need to be simultaneously met. Thus, advanced should be able to provide 10 ms end-to-end (E2E) latency
5G infrastructures move away from a “one architecture fits in general and 1 ms in extremely low latency use cases. The
all” nature towards a “multiple architectures adapted to each stringent latency requirements are addressed in the link level
service” concept. In this paper, the 5G system concept is physical resource block design.
mainly designed for eMBB, whereas the equally important
use cases of MIoT and MCC have earned a fair share of 3. Network Architecture
attention as exemplified in [2, 6, 7]. In addition to extremely
high throughputs, another main aspect of eMBB is the total The main target is to find critical solutions for a system
system capacity. The ultra-high density of broadband user concept suitable for a small cell deployment scenario of
connections needs to be supported as well. New spectrum 5G. Furthermore, the design of 5G network architecture
allocations, cell densification, and massive MIMO technology should be flexible. The current thinking is that there are
are seen as the key enablers to achieve these challenging goals. such public spaces as stadiums and city centers wherein
The key design targets of the proposed 5G concept are existing network operators shall have a role for deploying
presented below. These targets are the theoretical maximums the access points and operating the networks. On the other
that the system could support in ideal conditions. hand, there are privately owned properties (housing blocks
and shopping malls) where the network access points are
(1) Support for scalable bandwidths up to 0.5-1 GHz in privately/corporate owned or rented and the deployment and
carrier frequencies around 10 and 30 GHz. operation may be purchased from a new type of network
(2) Peak data rate that scales with system bandwidth, operator. The following assumptions are used in the network
meaning tens of Gbps for 0.5-1 GHz bandwidths. level system design:
(3) Supported antenna and stream configurations: (i) Infrastructure sharing between operators allowed
(a) Max. 256 transmit (TX) antennas and 16 receive (ii) Small cells and dedicated spectrum
(RX) antennas. (iii) Multioperator environment
(b) Max. 16 independent data streams. (iv) Private networks, private access points
(4) Spectrum efficiency (v) Support for contention-based and scheduled resource
usage
(a) Max. 100 bits/s/Hz.
The generic functional architecture model for 5G system
(5) Latency: concept illustrating the basic functional entities of the control
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 3

and user plane in the device and network infrastructure parts (i) Parameters describing the delay and angular disper-
is shown in Figure 1. The physical location of the functional sion, that is, DS and angle spreads (ASs), seem to
entities in the infrastructure part can vary between radio decrease in comparison to the parameters in the
nodes and more centralized units depending on the practical existing models at the frequency bands below 6 GHz
network deployment. The small cell radio networks are due to the higher attenuation of delayed components.
connected to common core cloud network (“EPC”, Evolved
Packet Core type network) with high capacity connections. (ii) When compared with lower frequency bands, specu-
Common core cloud network can serve multiple operators. lar reflection is more dominant propagation mecha-
The connectivity management related functionalities (for nism in comparison to diffuse scattering, leading to
example, mobility management) are implemented in the core smaller cluster ASs.
cloud network. The radio access network related functionali-
ties could be distributed between the local radio network and Also, several research projects including industry and
the common core cloud network. The location of different academia have been targeting to fulfill the requirements
functionalities, such as radio resource control and air inter- for designing and evaluating new channel models for the
face management, may depend on the local RAN, core cloud frequency bands up to 100 GHz. For instance, the initial
network connection quality. In a general case, we can assume parameterizations have been proposed for extending the
that air interface L1/L2 control is placed close to access points, quasi-deterministic radio channel generator (QuaDRiGa)
while higher layers could be centrally located into the core over 10-80 GHz frequency band in [11]. Also, METIS project
cloud network. If very high speed connections (fiber cable) [12] addressed the challenges of the future channel modeling
are available, then also the air interface L1/L2 control could be and recently developed a new map-based channel model up
implemented into servers located in the core cloud network. to 86 GHz as a pioneering work for 5G mobile communica-
tion system evaluations.
4. Radio Channel Models for System Design METIS model was intended to take into account all
radio channel characteristics, which are important for any
Appropriate channel model is a starting point and mandatory 5G mobile communications scenario. The model is based
for any system design. In the geometry-based stochastic on the ray-tracing (RT) using a simplified 3D geometric
channel model (GSCM), the propagation channel is char- description of the propagation environment. In the model,
acterized by statistical parameters obtained from the radio the building walls are modeled as rectangular surfaces with
channel measurements. This gives a possibility of using the specific electromagnetic material properties, and the prop-
same framework of the model for the simulations in different agation paths are modeled deterministically. However, the
frequencies and the different number or type of antennas. model is not fully deterministic since the random objects
Due to missing characterizations of propagation channel at representing for instance people and vehicles on the radio
10 GHz and in order to utilize GSCM promptly at 10 GHz link are modeled stochastically. Therefore, the model can be
frequency band, we carried out radio channel measurement understood as semideterministic model having significantly
campaigns with vector network analyzer and virtual arrays in shorter processing time in comparison to traditional RT. Even
the campus area of the University of Oulu. The measurements though several properties of the model have already been
covered two different propagation scenarios, namely, two- successfully validated, the model still needs to be validated
story lobby and urban small cell scenarios. From the collected by additional measurements.
measurement data, complete parameterizations were derived
for three-dimensional (3D) GCSM. The parameterizations 5. Link Level Design
are directly applicable to the 3rd Generation Partnership
Project (3GPP) model [8]. 5.1. Physical Layer Design. The physical layer design of the
The most important large-scale (LS) characteristics of 5G system concept is based on the “OFDM signals with new
the propagation channel are path loss and shadow fading. numerology” approach. The signal structure has originally
Based on our results, the path loss models are in some extent been designed to operate at 10 GHz band with bandwidths
similar than in other frequency bands. However, the standard up to 1 GHz. Key OFDM signal parameters are selected so
deviation of shadow fading 𝜎SF is significantly smaller due that synergy remains with the existing Long Term Evolution
to static measured propagation environment. In addition to (LTE) radio implementations. Also, we shall use the same
the path loss models and 𝜎SF , the parameterizations consisted channel coding solutions as with LTE, where appropriate.
of 50 different propagation parameters. For example, LS However, in general the backwards compatibility with LTE is
parameters are modeled by log-normal distribution with not maintained, since the 5G requirements lead to different
specific mean 𝜇 and standard deviation 𝜎 values giving physical layer designs when aiming to optimize the system
higher level characterization of the propagation channel. performance.
Determined LS parameters are summarized in Table 1 and the The subcarrier spacing has been selected as 120 kHz. With
full set of parameters is presented in [9, 10]. subcarrier spacing of 120 kHz, the useful symbol duration
Although the model parameters are heavily dependent becomes 8.3 𝜇s. The cyclic prefix should be short compared
on the measured propagation environment, the following to the symbol duration, but long enough to eliminate impair-
conclusions can be drawn from the determined LS and small- ments in the OFDM signal detection due to propagation
scale parameters: channel.
4 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

Device Part

Interference Identification
Control-Plane User-Plane
& Prediction

Radio Access Technology

Selection
Control-Plane (Air Packet Data Convergence
D2D Device Discovery & Interface Management, Protocol/Radio Link
Mode Selection Radio Resource Control) Control

Radio Resource & Medium Access Control

Interference Management
Alternative Physical
Air Interface Baseband 2 (e.g.,
Context Management Positioning)

Radio Node Clustering & Physical Baseband 1

Dynamic (De-)Activation

Reliable Service Basic Synchronization Physical Radio Frequency

Composition

3D Propagation Channel

Network Infrastructure Part

Interference Identification
Control-Plane User-Plane
& Prediction

Radio Access Technology

Selection
Control-Plane (Air Packet Data Convergence
Interface Management, Protocol/Radio Link
Spectrum Management Radio Resource Control) Control

Radio Node Clustering & Medium Access Control

Dynamic (De-)Activation
Alternative Physical
Context Management Air Interface Baseband 2 (e.g.,
Positioning)
Nomadic Nodes
Management Physical Baseband 1
Short/Long-term Radio
Resource & Interference
Management Basic Synchronization Physical Radio Frequency

Mobility Management

D2D Device Discovery & Network Synchronization

Mode Selection

Novel Network I/F Reliable Service

Termination Composition

Figure 1: Functional network architecture.

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 5

Control plane (Tx and Rx) Data plane (Tx or Rx) subframes (11 symbols) contain only data plane signal (either
TX or RX) with first three symbols in each concatenated
N + N OFDM symbols n OFDM symbols subframe having an extended cyclic prefix of TCP,EXT =
frequency

1.44 𝜇s.
We propose that the system shall have random access
(contention-based) and scheduled resources. For the sched-
uled resources, we shall use orthogonal frequency-division
multiple access (OFDMA), where the resource block (RB)
size is a compromise between high granularity (to support
transmission of very low amount of data) and signaling
overhead. The minimum RB size is selected here as 72
CP resource elements, consisting of 8 consecutive subcarriers
1 subframe and 9 data plane symbols (note: resource element is defined
as 1 subcarrier and 1 data plane symbol). This is comparable to
time LTE resource block size (84 resource elements) and can work
TX resources for control & RS TX/RX resources for data both with machine-type services and mobile broadband data.
RX resources for control & RS GP Random access resources shall be used by simple IoT
devices, which are constrained by small form factor and/or
Figure 2: Physical layer subframe structure.
battery operation. The scheduled resources can be used by
more complex IoT devices and especially mobile cellular
users as well as mobile broadband customers. The sharing
For the small cells (cell radius in the order of 75 m), cyclic between the resources shall be handled by the spectrum
prefix (CP) duration of 0.5 𝜇s is large enough to prevent manager described earlier.
overlapping of OFDM symbols due to propagation delays In the contention-based medium access case, the
even if no timing alignment is used in the UL transmissions. Resource Coordination functionality of layered resource
Measured delay spread values indicate that a typical delay management provides the template frame to a cluster of
spread at 10 GHz frequency with short transmission distances nodes allowing contention-based access inside the cluster.
in indoor and outdoor environments is below 50 ns. For Control signals are transmitted in time-frequency resources
these reasons, we conclude that CP duration of 0.5 𝜇s is separated from the data resources.
enough for the 5G small cell operation scenarios. Table 2
shows alternative values for the 5G physical layer parameters, 6. Towards 5G RF Implementation
covering several (but not all possible) channel bandwidths
between 31.25 MHz and 1000 MHz. Large antenna arrays will be one of the key enablers for
Given the above physical layer design, we have also 5G RF implementations for both capacity and link range.
computed the achievable data rates for several parameter sets In this section, we briefly discuss multibeam link budget
as indicated by Table 2. The maximum data rates for a given and RF restrictions for implementing cm-wave multiantenna
bandwidth are achieved for 256QAM, 16 MIMO data streams, transceivers (TRXs). Further in-depth discussion on the
and coding rate 𝑟 = 1, while the minimum data rates are subject is available in [15].
achieved for BPSK, 1 data stream, and coding rate 𝑟 = 1/2.
We assume 90% bandwidth efficiency and rather optimistic 6.1. Link Budget. For achieving the target data rates in
protocol efficiency of 100%. practice, the link budget must address at least the following:
As the duplexing method we have chosen asymmetric
dynamic time division duplexing [13]. In this particular (i) Capacity evaluations with different modulations and
approach, the uplink and downlink capacities may be chosen waveforms
based on the traffic need within each cell, interference miti- (ii) Hardware assumptions including physical dimen-
gation, and/or management requirements and user densities. sions, power, noise, and nonlinearity
(iii) Partitioning of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) budget for
5.2. Multiple Access Design. The 5G subframe structure is different parts of TX and RX
shown in Figure 2. One subframe contains 11 OFDM symbols
in time domain. In the control plane (𝑛 = 2 symbols), we (iv) Multistream transmission and adaptive beamforming
introduce a guard period of TGP = 0.94 𝜇s, and the cyclic (v) Spatial channel model
prefix is TCP = 0.5 𝜇s. The OFDM symbol duration is Tsymbol =
8.33 𝜇s. Therefore, for the subframe duration, we get Tsubframe Practical RF link budget consists of optimizing tens of
= 3 ⋅TGP + 11 ⋅ (Tsymbol + TCP ) = 100 𝜇s. different parameters together for setting the design targets for
In the case where the system does not request extremely TRX design. Furthermore, requirements are very dependent
small E2E latencies (1 ms), the amount of control overhead on the target scenario including waveform assumptions,
can be reduced by concatenating multiple subframes together. propagation environment, required physical dimensions, and
In this case, the TX and RX control parts are embedded into user positions. Table 3 presents an example of system level
the first subframe with 9 data symbols, while the remaining RF specifications for two different frequency bands at indoor
6 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

Table 1: Derived LS parameters from the channel measurements.

LOS NLOS
Channel model parameter
Two-story lobby Urban small cell Two-story lobby Urban small cell
𝜇DS −7.78 −7.70 −7.55 −7.41
DS log10 ([s])
𝜎DS 0.13 0.16 0.17 0.14
𝜇KF 8.5 5.1 N/A N/A
KF [dB]
𝜎KF 3.5 3.2 N/A N/A
SF [dB] 𝜎SF 2 2 3 2
𝜇ASD 0.86 1.08 1.32 1.24
ASD log10 ([∘ ])
𝜎ASD 0.23 0.35 0.23 0.32
𝜇ASA 1.44 1.47 1.64 1.77
ASA log10 ([∘ ])
𝜎ASA 0.11 0.20 0.18 0.08
𝜇ESD 0.91 0.80 0.54 0.89
ESD log10 ([∘ ])
𝜎ESD 0.31 0.17 0.49 0.07
𝜇ESA 0.61 1.12 0.82 1.08
ESA log10 ([∘ ])
𝜎ESA 0.17 0.10 0.29 0.13
DS = root mean square delay spread; KF = Rician K-factor; SF = shadow fading; ASD = azimuth angle spread of departure; ASA = azimuth angle spread of
arrival; ESD = elevation angle spread of departure; and ESA = elevation angle spread of arrival.

Table 2: Physical layer signal parameters for 5G system concept (LTE values as a reference).

Property LTE 5Gto10G

Channel BW [MHz] 20 31.25 125 500 1000
Subframe length [ms] 1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
Sampling frequency [MHz] 30.72 30.72 122.88 491.52 983.04
FFT size 2048 256 1024 4096 8192
Subcarrier spacing [kHz] 15 120 120 120 120
Occupied subcarriers 1201 234 938 3750 7500
Guard subcarriers 847 22 86 346 692
Occupied bandwidth [MHz] 18.015 28 113 450 900
DL BW efficiency 90% 89.9% 90% 90% 90%
OFDM symbols/subframe 7 11 11 11 11
Symbol duration excl. CP [𝜇s] 66.7 8.33 8.33 8.33 8.33
CP duration [𝜇s] 5.2/4.69 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
Data rate on full BW Min . . . Max [Mbps] 13 . . . 3,391 53 . . . 13,592 211 . . . 54,340 422 . . . 108,680

LOS scenario. These very abstracted requirements must then In MIMO systems, spatial channel model is required for
be divided further for different parts of the TRX. link budget evaluations. Multistream link budget is deter-
In practice, adaptive modulation and coding scheme mined based on MIMO beam-specific path gains, where each
defines the minimum SNR required at the RX input. The stream is handled as an independent link [16]. The required
nonidealities of TX limit the achievable SNR with respect TX power for rank 1-4 data transmissions at 10.1 GHz in
to absolute power level. Figure 3(a) shows an example of indoor LOS scenario is presented in Figure 3(b). The used
signal-to-noise plus distortion ratio (SNDR) simulated with TX configuration is given in Table 3 including the notations:
OFDM/256QAM waveform and commercial linear power base station (BS), uniform rectangular array (URA), mobile
amplifier (PA) for 10 GHz. These results are then combined terminal (MT), half-power beamwidth (HPBW), uniform
with EVM values of other parts of the TX. It is clearly linear array (ULA), and output power (Pout).
observed that the achievable linear power and hence data rate
is easily overestimated, if only some of the TX nonidealities 6.2. Beamforming Arrays for 5G. One of the fundamental
are taken into account. RX is treated in a similar fashion. questions in cm-wave communications is the number of
Furthermore, the overall SNR-budget must be distributed antennas. The direct consequence of increasing frequency is
between TX and RX. In RX, the SNR is typically limited by the decreased antenna aperture. Hence, we can increase the
the noise at lower signal levels, whereas other nonidealities number of antennas while maintaining the same physical area
including phase noise of the synthesizer, analog-to-digital and eventually provide more beamforming gain. Multiple
converter (ADC) quantization noise, I/Q mismatches, and antennas are not only needed for increasing the data rate, but
cochannel interference limit the SNR at higher power levels. fundamentally for providing any reasonable link range. High
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 7

Table 3: Example of system level RF specifications.

Center frequency 10.1 GHz 26 GHz

Signal bandwidth 500 MHz 1000 MHz
Array configuration at BS 8 × 2 URA 16 × 4 URA
BS HPBW (azim, elev) (15∘ , 90∘ ) (7∘ , 30∘ )
Array configuration at MT 4-element ULA 8-element ULA
MT HPBW (azim, elev) (30∘ , 120∘ ) (7∘ , 120∘ )
TX EVM for uncoded 256 QAM 2.2% 2.2%
PA back-off (for OFDM signal) 9.6 dB 9.6 dB
Pout Peak per PA in (BS, MT) (10, 0.1) W (1, 0.01) W
Total Noise Figure of (BS, MT) (8, 10) dB (8, 10) dB

60 10
60

Required average power per PA (dBm)

55 9
50 8 50
SNDR at antenna input (dB)

Rank 1 data rate (Gbit/s)

45 7
40
40 6
35 5 30

30 4 20
25 3
DAC, phase noise, PA 10
20 etc. dominates dominates 2
15 1 0
10 0 5 10 15 20 25
26 28 30 32 34 36 38
Average ０ＩＯＮ (dBm) Link distance (m)

２４Ｒ Ｑ １！－ Rank 1, Max rate = 3.06 Gbps

３．＄２０！ ＩＨＦＳ
Rank 2, Max rate = 6.12 Gbps
３．＄２４Ｒ ＮＩＮ；Ｆ ＂ＦＩＡ2 (1+３．＄２４Ｒ ＮＩＮ；Ｆ )
Rank 3, Max rate = 9.17 Gbps
２０！ Ｑ １！－
Rank 4, Max rate = 12.23 Gbps
(a) (b)

Figure 3: (a) Nonlinear PA and TX SNDR models with achievable data rates and (b) required average powers per PA for Rank N transmission
with indoor LOS channel model [14] at 10.1 GHz.

directivity of the array results easily in very high effective of individual antenna elements is essential for maintaining
isotropic radiated power (EIRP), which might be harmful the connection in adaptive user scenarios and minimizing
for human tissue in case it is close to human body, limiting the interference between data transmissions. However, the
the maximum EIRP to be used. Decreasing antenna aperture array scanning has an impact on the impedance matching
also enables arrays for mobile terminals. However, the area of of individual elements. Furthermore, the single element
feeding network for large arrays limits the size of the antenna pattern affects the array scanning region. Hence, practical
array in small form factors. Furthermore, because of higher assumption of array scanning angle is in range of +/−30∘ .
circuit-level losses, the RF frontend must be embedded close
to antennas to maintain the power efficiency. 6.3. Practical Design Challenges. The key challenges in cm-
In order to achieve the benefits of multiple antennas, wave RF design are as follows:
beamforming system must be controlled adaptively. Tradi-
tionally, each antenna has individual RF chain and the control (i) Wideband ADC/DAC dynamic range versus power
can be done in digital domain. However, because of extremely consumption
wide bandwidths, the TRX power consumption is not dom- (ii) Synthesizer phase noise
inated only by analog components such as PA. Moreover,
digital parallelism and wideband ADC’s/digital-to-analog (iii) Linear (enough) output power with cm-wave PAs
converters (DACs) are playing a crucial role when mini- (iv) Implementing high-efficiency PA array
mizing the power consumption. Because of these aspects,
(v) Physical form factors in antenna-RF integration
hybrid/RF beamforming is considered as de facto in cm-wave
cellular systems. Adaptive RF phase and amplitude control (vi) RF- and hybrid-beamforming array design.
8 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

The required sum power will be produced with several PA and yet very high data rates are achievable. Propagation and
elements, resulting in decreased power per PA. Furthermore, penetration losses tend to increase with frequency, limiting
multiple signals with different power levels in PA input give the feasible link range. However, at the same time antenna
practical constraints for beam synthesis and power allocation size and spacing go down enabling easier deployment of large
per PA. These aspects give new tradeoffs for PA technologies MIMO systems with high array gain and beam directivity.
although producing power at any of the options from CMOS Therefore, hybrid-beamforming architectures and power-
to GaN will be a major challenge at high frequencies. and cost-efficient RF transceiver design remain in the focal
The practical PA solution must be cheap, power efficient, role when moving from centimeter waves to millimeter-
linear, and small. However, these requirements cannot be waves.
optimized independently. Power efficient PA architectures,
such as Doherty [17], are physically larger, cost more, and Conflicts of Interest
require linearization, which is traditionally done by digital
predistortion (DPD). For RF/hybrid-beamforming arrays, The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest
conventional DPD is not possible because the waveform at regarding the publication of this paper.
each PA input cannot be controlled.
Different use scenarios set very different requirements for Acknowledgments
the RF implementation, especially in terms of required power,
linearity, and beamforming. From the array scanning per- This article is mostly based on the research work in the
spective, a convenient location of indoor BS is in the corner “5G Radio Access Solutions 10 GHz and Beyond Frequency
of the room/office area. A typical room layout indicates that it Bands (5Gto10G)” project over the years 2014-2017. Project
might be beneficial to have wider beams in the elevation than partners Bittium, Huawei, Keysight, Nokia, and Tekes are
in the azimuth domain for beam/user separation. For outdoor hereby gratefully acknowledged for their support.
BSs, high array gain for cell-edge users is a necessity that
results in narrow beams. This complicates the beam scanning References
and tracking when serving mobile users. On the other hand,
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must adapt to various propagation scenarios. At 10 GHz, the
the Twenty-twenty Information Society (METIS),” in FP7-ICT-
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𝜆/2 antenna spacing in small devices. Hence, a linear array
[3] A. Osseiran, F. Boccardi, V. Braun et al., “Scenarios for 5G
is considered to be the only practical solution, because the
mobile and wireless communications: the vision of the METIS
impact of mechanics forces the array to be designed at the project,” IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 26–
bottom or top end of a device. However, other device types 35, 2014.
such as tablets and laptops may contain more antennas.
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