2020/10/13 by Gomez-Cuba, Felipe, Zugno, Tommaso, Kim, Junseok +3
#FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Information Theory (cs.IT) #Signal Processing (eess.SP) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.06836
This paper analyzes Hybrid Beamforming (HBF) and Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) in millimeter wave (mmWave) 5th generation (5G) cellular networks considering the full protocol stack with TCP/IP traffic and MAC scheduling. Prior work on HBF and MU-MIMO has assumed full-buffer transmissions and studied link-level performance. We report non-trivial interactions between the HBF technique, the front-loaded channel estimation pilot scheme in NR, and the constraints of MU-MIMO scheduling. We also report that joint multi-user beamforming design is imperative, in the sense that the MU-MIMO system cannot be fully exploited when implemented as a mere collection of single-user analog beams working in parallel. By addressing these issues, throughput can be dramatically increased in mmWave 5G networks by means of Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA).