Spectral Efficiency of MIMO Millimeter-Wave Links with Single-Carrier Modulation for 5G Networks

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the spectral efficiency of MIMO millimeter-wave links in 5G scenarios using single-carrier modulation schemes, highlighting the impact of antenna array size, link distance, and power on performance.

Contribution

It compares two single-carrier modulation schemes for mmWave MIMO links, providing insights into their spectral efficiency and the effects of system parameters.

Findings

Linear equalization outperforms cyclic prefix-based methods in spectral efficiency.

Spectral efficiency increases with antenna array size.

Performance degrades significantly beyond 100 meters or with low transmit power.

Abstract

Future wireless networks will extensively rely upon bandwidths centered on carrier frequencies larger than 10GHz. Indeed, recent research has shown that, despite the large path-loss, millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies can be successfully exploited to transmit very large data-rates over short distances to slowly moving users. Due to hardware complexity and cost constraints, single-carrier modulation schemes, as opposed to the popular multi-carrier schemes, are being considered for use at mmWave frequencies. This paper presents preliminary studies on the achievable spectral efficiency on a wireless MIMO link operating at mmWave in a typical 5G scenario. Two different single-carrier modem schemes are considered, i.e. a traditional modulation scheme with linear equalization at the receiver, and a single-carrier modulation with cyclic prefix, frequency-domain equalization and FFT-based processing at the receiver. Our results show that the former achieves a larger spectral efficiency than the latter. Results also confirm that the spectral efficiency increases with the dimension of the antenna array, as well as that performance gets severely degraded when the link length exceeds 100 meters and the transmit power falls below 0dBW. Nonetheless, mmWave appear to be very suited for providing very large data-rates over short distances.