Design of millimeter wave hybrid beamforming systems

Abstract

Millimeter wave (mmWave) signals experience a significant path-loss in free space. To overcome this weakness, a large number of antennas are needed to obtain a high beamforming gain. Although a large number of antennas can be implemented in small area due to the short wavelength, the digital beamforming techniques cannot be implemented easily due to the high complexity of hardwares. To solve this problem, the hybrid beamforming systems which have smaller number of radio frequency (RF) chains are proposed in the literature. Although the hybrid beamforming systems may achieve the spectral efficiencies of the digital beamforming systems closely, the spectral efficiency cannot be monotonically increase along with the number of data streams due to the limited scattering in mmWave channel. In this paper, we provide a guide for the design of mmWave hybrid beamforming systems. We find the optimal number of streams, and present the spectral efficiency achievable region in which the system guarantees the reliable communications with the lowest cost.