Low Power Analog-to-Digital Conversion in Millimeter Wave Systems: Impact of Resolution and Bandwidth on Performance

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how ADC resolution and bandwidth affect the achievable data rate in millimeter wave systems, considering power constraints and comparing analog and digital combining architectures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the trade-offs between ADC resolution, bandwidth, and receiver architecture in millimeter wave systems under power constraints.

Findings

Maximum bandwidth exists beyond which rate decreases

Analog combining may outperform digital in some regimes

Digital combining can be more power-efficient overall

Abstract

The wide bandwidth and large number of antennas used in millimeter wave systems put a heavy burden on the power consumption at the receiver. In this paper, using an additive quantization noise model, the effect of analog-digital conversion (ADC) resolution and bandwidth on the achievable rate is investigated for a multi-antenna system under a receiver power constraint. Two receiver architectures, analog and digital combining, are compared in terms of performance. Results demonstrate that: (i) For both analog and digital combining, there is a maximum bandwidth beyond which the achievable rate decreases; (ii) Depending on the operating regime of the system, analog combiner may have higher rate but digital combining uses less bandwidth when only ADC power consumption is considered, (iii) digital combining may have higher rate when power consumption of all the components in the receiver front-end are taken into account.