Smart Small Cell with Hybrid Beamforming for 5G: Theoretical Feasibility and Prototype Results

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of real-time 3D hybrid beamforming for 5G small cells using a prototype testbed, showing potential capacity improvements over LTE through system-level simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a real-time 3D hybrid beamforming testbed for 5G small cells and validates its performance through measurements and simulations.

Findings

Feasibility of real-time 3D hybrid beamforming confirmed

Prototype implementation demonstrates link-level performance

System-level simulations show potential capacity gains over LTE

Abstract

In this article, we present a real-time three dimensional (3D) hybrid beamforming for fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. One of the key concepts in 5G cellular systems is the small cell network, which settles the high mobile traffic demand and provides uniform user-experienced data rates. The overall capacity of the small cell network can be enhanced with the enabling technology of 3D hybrid beamforming. This study validates the feasibility of the 3D hybrid beamforming, mostly for link-level performances, through the implementation of a realtime testbed using a software-defined radio (SDR) platform and fabricated antenna array. Based on the measured data, we also investigate system-level performances to verify the gain of the proposed smart small cell system over long term evolution (LTE) systems by performing system-level simulations based on a 3D ray-tracing tool.