Design of Efficient Algorithms for Millimeter Wave Communication in Future Generation Cellular Networks

The number of cellular subscribers and their demand on high data rates have been constantly increasing. In order to fulfil this demand, future fifth generation (5G) cellular networks must take advantage of the frequencies in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) band, i.e., 10300 GHz. Since large bandwidth is available for communication in the mm-wave band, we can understand the potential in mm-wave communication to ensure high speed communication. However, there are significant hurdles that have to be overcome before one could realize a practical working mm-wave communication system. Some of the issues or impairments are related to significant path-loss, shadowing, carrier frequency offset (CFO), and phase noise distortion due to transmission at very higher frequencies. In addition, mm-wave communication suffers from severe blockage and thus quite shallow coverage due to narrower beamforming. The above mentioned issues can be tackled by employing base station (BS) cooperation, robust beamforming design, CFO and phase noise estimation and mitigation techniques, and relay-assisted communication. The existing solutions for UHF and microwave communication systems cannot be applied directly to mm-wave communication systems due to very high frequency transmission and severe impact of impairments. The research in these areas is currently in its nascent stages of development. The aim of this project is to provide provide state-of-the-art solutions for the realization of mm-wave communication in future generation cellular networks. The recent literature sheds light on hybrid analog-digital precoding and channel estimation to realize practical transceiver structure for large antenna array mm-wave communication systems. However, the practical system suffers from other impairments, such as severe phase noise or CFO. Joint compensation of channel effect and these impairments is required for successful decoding of the received signal. Based on concrete knowledge of our research team regarding handling of such practical problems in UHF and microwave communication systems, we aim to first build concrete theoretical solutions to realize a practical mm-wave communication system in the presence of stronger impact of impairments. Next, we aim to verify and test our algorithms on state-of-the-art equipment for further refinement.