Perspectives on 5G:

Beamforming, MIMO, and more

Robert W. Heath Jr. Nuria Gonzlez Prelcic
The University of Texas at Austin Universidade de Vigo, Spain
rheath@utexas.edu nuria@gts.uvigo.es

Webinar Series 1
Outline
Background
Massive MIMO
Millimeter Wave MIMO
MIMO and 5G: technologies and challenges

Webinar Series 2
Background

Webinar Series 3
What is MIMO?
Multiple antennas
Multiple antennas

MIMO:
Multiple Input Multiple Output

MIMO in cellular networks MIMO in WLAN

3GPP LTE-A; 5G IEEE 802.11n/WiFi, IEEE 802.11ac/WiFi,
IEEE 802.11ad/WiFi / WiGig
Broad class of TX & RX techniques to improve reliability or capacity
Multiple TX and RX antennas to enable several signal paths to carry the data
Advanced signal processing to adapt to the channel
Changes algorithms, performance, and system design
Webinar Series 4
 Adaptive arrays
phased array Simple beamforming

c,b,a, Upsampling
and DAC
RFain
RF H RF
ADC
RFain
Receive
processing
Chain Chain
pulse shaping

Channel State Information

Adaptive use of antenna elements to create adaptive pattern

Initially mechanical, later electrical
Array is closely spaced (requires coherence) Downtilt
angle
Beam is directed along dominant propagation paths

Used in cellular to implement electrical downtilt

Webinar Series 5
Smart antennas Nulls in beam pattern

Interfering
user

RF Space/ Space-
ADC
RFain
Time filtering
Chain
Desired
user
Interfering
user
Generalization of adaptive array with more complicated beamforming
Beam pattern adaptively designed to cancel interference
Array is closely spaced and uses DoA / DoD information to shape beam

Used in radar and sonar, but not widely used in cellular despite early hype

Webinar Series 6
 Receive diversity

Upsampling time
c,b,a, and RF Receive
DAC
RFain

pulse shaping Chain

deep fade Spatial
Combining
time
time
Selecting best
Envelope of channel receive antenna
avoids fades
Exploit spatial decorrelation to reduce effects of small-scale fading
Receive processing selects or combines to achieve diversity
Array is widely spaced (many wavelengths) or uses polarization

Used at BSs on the uplink to reduce link margin, comp. for low mobile power

Webinar Series 7
 Transmit diversity without channel state

Upsampling
c,b,a, and RF
DAC
RFain

pulse shaping Chain time

c,b,a, Space Time + Space Time

Coding Decoding
Upsampling
c,b,a, and RF
DAC
RFain time
pulse shaping Chain

Exploit spatial decorrelation at the transmitter

Send different streams with the same information from each TX antenna
Need space-time coding or other processing
Use largely spaced antenna arrays or polarization
Open loopTX diversity is used in the downlink in 3G CDMA and LTE* systems
*Space Frequency Block Codes are used instead of STCs in LTE

Webinar Series 8
 Transmit diversity with channel state
phased array

time

c,b,a, Upsampling
and DAC
RFain
RF
+ = time H
Chain Cophasing combines Decoding
pulse shaping
signals in the air
time

Channel State Information

Exploit spatial decorrelation at the transmitter
Couple the transmitted signal into the channel
Acquiring the channel state at the transmitter is essential
Feedback channel state using backward communication channel
Channel reciprocity exploits forward / backward symmetry and calibration
Closed loopTX diversity is used in the downlink in LTE systems
Webinar Series 9
Spatial multiplexing (often what is meant by MIMO)
e,c,a, Upsampling
and DAC
RFain
RF
pulse shaping Chain
f,e,d,c,b,a, Space Time
Receiver
f,d,b, Upsampling
and DAC
RFain
RF
pulse shaping Chain

Send multiple data streams in parallel, keep total power constant

Cancel co-antenna interference at the receiver
Increases capacity by min ( # TX ant., # RX ant.)
Requires large array separation at both the TX and the RX
Leads to a sufficiently rich scattering environment

LTE supports spatial multiplexing in the downlink, later uplink

Webinar Series 10
 Multiuser MIMO
User #1

H
H
User #2

MU-MIMO Downlink MU-MIMO Uplink

Send different data to users in parallel
Separate users by precoding
Similar gains as SM
Users can have only a single TX antenna!
Requires channel state information
Multiple users send in parallel
Separate users by spatial signature
Similar gains as MIMO spatial multiplexing
Users have only a single transmit antenna!
Synchronization remains a challenge

MU-MIMO has been incorporated into LTE

Webinar Series 11
SU versus MU in cellular systems

SU-MIMO MU-MIMO

SM to increase spectral efficiency BSs process inter-user interference

# of BS antennas >> # of user antennas Require CSI for all supported users
# of BS antennas << # of users

SU Performance limited by # of user antennas

MU Performance limited by # of BS antennas

Webinar Series 12
 Going towards 5G with MIMO

more antennas at the UE?

requires too much space massive MIMO?
high capacity and energy efficiency

more MU-MIMO?
feedback is a huge bottleneck
5G*

mmWave MIMO?
more cooperation? high data rate and reduced
high losses in practice interference

* F. Bocardi, R. Heath, A. Lozano, T. Marzetta and P. Popovski, Five Disruptive Technology Directions for 5G, IEEE Communications Magazine, Feb. 2014

Webinar Series 13
Massive MIMO

Webinar Series 14
What is massive MIMO?
Hundreds of BS antennas
Tens of users

A very large antenna array at each base station

An order of magnitude more antenna elements that in conventional systems
Low overhead channel estimation using reciprocity

Essentially multiuser MIMO with lots of base station antennas

Marzetta, Thomas L. "Noncooperative cellular wireless with unlimited numbers of base station antennas." Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on, 2010

Webinar Series 15
Benefits of massive MIMO
X10
increased capacity +
X100 cheap &
high energy
efficiency + low power
hardware

simple reduction

Image taken from ***

signal
processing + of
latency
*T. L.Marzetta, Noncooperative cellular wireless with unlimited numbers of base station antennas, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., Nov. 2010.
**H. Q.Ngo, E.G.Larsson, and T. L.Marzetta, Energy and spectral efficiency of very large multiuser MIMOsystems, IEEE Trans. Commun., Apr. 2013.
***E. G. Larsson, F. Tufvesson, O. Edfors, and T. L. Marzetta, Massive MIMO for Next Generation Wireless Systems, IEEE Communications Magazine, Feb. 2014.

Webinar Series 16
Application scenarios in homogeneous networks

Mulidimensional sectorization

backhaul links central

controller
Single-cell operation Distributed massive MIMO
*K. Zheng et al., Survey of Large-Scale MIMO Systems, IEEE Commun. Surveys and Tutorials, 2015

Webinar Series 17
Application scenarios in heterogeneous networks

Wireless backhaul

small
macro
cell BS
cell BS

Hotspot coverage
Dynamic overlay
*K. Zheng et al., Survey of Large-Scale MIMO Systems, IEEE Commun. Surveys and Tutorials, 2015

Webinar Series 18
TDD massive MIMO UPLINK

DOWNLINK

Uplink Downlink Uplink

time

Uplink and downlink use same frequency in different time slots

Uplink/downlink channels are reciprocal within coherence time
Uplink pilots used to estimate the downlink channel
Pilot overhead proportional to the number of users

No feedback overhead, training overheads proportional to # users

Webinar Series 19
Sources of degredation in massive MIMO

signal
interference

Pilot contamination
Causes channel estimation error due to reuse of pilot sequences
Performance limiting factor for very large arrays
Interuser interference due to channel estimation error
As # antennas increases, in-cell and out-of-cell interference goes to zero
but pilot contamination remains
Webinar Series 20
Multi-cell TDD massive MIMO
inter-cell interference

With imperfect CSI, as the number of BS antennas N goes to infinity

Noise and intra-cell interference disappear
Uplink transmit power can be scaled down proportional to the square root of N
BSs precode TX signals using downlink CSI to mitigate inter-user interference
Inter-cell interference exists without BS cooperation
Marzetta, Thomas L. "Noncooperative cellular wireless with unlimited numbers of base station antennas." IEEE Trans. Wireless Communications, 2010

Webinar Series 21
Mitigating pilot contamination
Optimized pilot allocation

xx
Reduce frequency reuse factor, coordinate use of pilots,

xx xx AOA based methods

Exploit long-term AOA statistic

Precoding techniques
Distributed single-cell precoding, multi-cell
cooperation, pilot contamination precoding,

Blind channel estimation

Estimate channel subspace from SVD of the RX signal; joint
iterative estimation of the channel vectors and transmitted data,

Pilot contamination can be overcome

Webinar Series 22
FDD massive MIMO
Training
# BS antennas
Overhead
Uplink training Uplink data
GUARD BAND
Downlink training Downlink data
Feedback
# BS antennas
Overhead
time
Uplink and downlink use different frequencies, not reciprocal any more
Uplink and downlink channels are usually uncorrelated
Guard band larger than coherence bandwidth
Users have to estimate/quantize/feed back downlink channel to BS

FDD massive MIMO may require huge overhead on training and feedback

Webinar Series 23
Full Dimension (FD) MIMO
F Beamforming

Exploit space-efficient two dimensional arrays

Beamforming in both azimuth and elevation to reduce interference
Multidimensional channel structure
High potential to enable FDD massive MIMO

FD MIMO is not necessarily massive

Webinar Series 24
Millimeter wave MIMO

Webinar Series 25
Millimeter wave (mmWave) from 30GHz to 300GHz

: Proposed by FCC in 2015

~4 GHz
Unlicensed 7 GHz 10 GHz E-band
LMDS 1.6 GHz
0.85 GHz 1.4 GHz 7 GHz 7 GHz

27 GHz 37 GHz 40 GHz 57 GHz 64 GHz 71 GHz 86 GHz

Auctioned in 2000 Expected to be unlicensed
- $410,649,085 / 2,173 licenses Even more is available above 90GHz

Lots of potential spectrum currently used for backhaul or legacy systems

Spectrum for 5G and mmWave technology are (almost) ready!!!
Webinar Series 26
 What are some realistic rate gains in cellular?
5% Average
62x
70.0 120.0
X capacity improvement

60.0 100.0 95x

50.0
80.0
38x
40.0
60.0 58x
30.0
40.0
20.0

10.0 20.0

0.0 0.0
28 sparse 28 dense 72 sparse 72 dense 28 sparse 28 dense 72 sparse 72 dense

* Note the fine print about dense networks, more to come

Baseline 2 GHz w/ Upper cmWave 28 GHz: mmWave 72 GHz:
50 MHz BW 500 MHz (expect 10x) 2 GHz (expect 40x)
Surprise - mmWave gains are more than a spectrum multiplier!
* T. Bai and R. W. Heath Jr., Coverage and rate analysis for millimeter wave cellular networks, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., Feb. 2015.
** T. Bai, A. Alkhateeb, and R. W. Heath, Jr., ``Coverage and Capacity of Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks," IEEE Communications Magazine, Sept. 2014.

Webinar Series 27
Potential bandwidths and data rates at mmWave
Total Typical Peak rates
spectrum bandwidth
IEEE 802.11ad* 7 GHz 2 GHz 6 Gbps * IEEE 802.11ad
is commercially
in 60 GHz
available

IEEE 802.11ay 7 GHz 4 GHz 100 Gbps

in 60 GHz
28 GHz 5G 0.85 GHz 200 MHz 1.5 Gbps
39 GHz 5G 3 GHz 400 MHz 3 Gbps
E band 5G 10 GHz 2 GHz 24 Gbps
10x to 100x gains in bandwidth going to mmWave
Webinar Series 28
 Differentiating features of mmWave

Blockage Power
consumption***
RF
ADC
upper array Chain

blocked with Nr RF Baseband

combining Lr Combining Ns
fingers
RF
ADC
WRF Chain WBB

lower array
blocked by
Directional and adaptive
person
antenna arrays*,**
*W. Roh et al. "Millimeter-wave beamforming as an enabling technology for 5G cellular communications: theoretical feasibility and prototype results," in IEEE Commun.
Mag., 2014
**A. Alkhateeb, J. Mo, N. Gonzlez-Prelcic, and R. W. Heath Jr, MIMO Precoding and Combining Solutions for Millimeter-Wave Systems, IEEE Commun. Mag. 2014
*** R. Mendez-Rial, C. Rusu, N. Gonzlez-Prelcic, A.Alkhateeb, and R. W. Heath, Jr.,Hybrid MIMO Architectures for Millimeter Wave Communications: Phase Shifters or
Switches?, IEEE Access, 2016

Webinar Series 29
MIMO system at < 6 GHz frequencies

RF RF
DAC Chain 2 to 8 Chain ADC
antennas

RF RF MIMO
MIMO DAC Chain Chain ADC Combining
Precoding and
Baseband
Precoding
Bandwidths of Equalization
5-100 MHz
RF RF
DAC Chain Chain ADC

# antennas = # RF = # pairs ADCs

Conventional MIMO heavily leverages digital signal processing
Webinar Series 30
 Power consumption impacts MIMO architecture

RF
LNA
Chain ADC
Power at 60 GHz
Freq. Band. NRX Power
1GHz BW
consumption
20mW
250 mW Baseband 2.8 GHz 20 4 120 mW
processing
Baseband MHz
40mW Precoding
6 GHz 1 GHz 4 2 W !!!!

RF
LNA
Chain ADC

Large antenna systems are employed at mmWave

Cost and power consumption of mmWave components are high
Unlikely to dedicate a separate RF chain and ADC for each antenna
* R. Mndez-Rial, et al. Hybrid MIMO Architectures for MmWave Communications: Phase shifters or switches? , IEEE Access 2016.
** R. Heath, N. Gonzlez-Prelcic, S. Rangan, W. Roh and A. Sayeed, An Overview of Signal Processing Techniques for Millimeter Wave MIMO Systems, IEEE JSTSP, 2016

Webinar Series 31
MIMO architectures at mmWave: analog beamforming
beamformer combiner

Baseband RF RF Baseband
DAC
RFain ADC
RFain

Chain
H Chain

Phase shifters

Use a network of phase shifters

Constant gain and quantized angles
Power consumption in the phase shifter depends on the angle resolution
Phase shifters apply for the entire band
Limited to single stream and single user MIMO
* S. Hur, T. Kim, D. Love, J. Krogmeier, T. Thomas, and A. Ghosh, Millimeter wave beamforming for wireless backhaul and access in small cell networks, IEEE
Transactions on Communications, vol. 61, no. 10, pp. 43914403, 2013.

Webinar Series 32
 MIMO architectures at mmWave: hybrid precoding
DAC
1-bit RF RF 1-bit
Chain ADC
ADC Chain ADC

Baseband RF RF Baseband
Precoding Precoding Combining
Lt Nt
H Nr Lr
Combining

Ns Ns >= 1
>= 1 FBB 1-bit RF FRF RF 1-bit
DAC WRF ADC WBB
ADC Chain Chain ADC

Combine analog and digital beamforming

Analog beamforming with multiple RF chains*,**

Number of DACs / ADCs is generally << # of antennas
Flexible approach for multi-stream MIMO or multiuser MIMO at mmWave
** Ahmed Alkhateeb, Jianhua Mo, Nuria Gonzlez-Prelcic and Robert W. Heath, Jr., ``MIMO Precoding and Combining Solutions for Millimeter Wave Systems,''
IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 52, no. 12, 122-131, December 2014.

Webinar Series 33
 Single-user hybrid precoding design
Narrowband channel
AoA angle Clustered in space
spread Transmitted symbols
Noise
q RX signal
RF precoder BB precoder BB combiner RF combiner
Channel is known at BS and MS
Design criteria: maximize spectral efficiency
Total transmit power constraint RF imposes
RF beamformer and combiner further constrained non-convex constraints
Joint optimization with non convex constraints is intractable
Optimize the precoder and combiner separately assuming ideal RX processing*
Exploit channel structure to design the precoders/combiners
* O. El Ayach, S. Rajagopal, S. Abu-Surra, Z. Pi, and R. Heath, Spatially sparse precoding in millimeter wave MIMO systems, IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communications, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 14991513, March 2014

Webinar Series 34
 Frequency selective hybrid precoding

Received signal at subcarrier k OFDM based transceiver

Same RF precoder for all subbands, taken from a quantized codebook

Frequency selective BB precoders (designed per subcarrier)
*A. Alkhateeb and Robert W. Heath Jr., Frequency selective hybrid precoding for limited feedback millimeter wave system, to appear in IEEE Trans. on
Communications, 2016

Webinar Series 35
Multiuser (MU) hybrid precoding
different possible
multiple users architectures at UE
multiple streams
1-bit
1-bit RF
user 1
ADC
DAC
ADC Chain
Baseban
d
Precodin
g
Baseband
Baseband RF
Precoding
Precodin Beam- 1-bit
ADC
g forming

1-bit
1-bit RF ADC
DAC
ADC Chain
Baseban
d
Precodin
g
user 2
downlink operation 1-bit
ADC

Limited Feedback

channel state feedback used to help design the precoders

Webinar Series 36
MU hybrid precoding design
MS has an array
with analog-only
combiners
sparse channels
Baseband RF
precoder precoder RF
combiner
Ns=U, U Lt
Limited Feedback
Two-stage multi-user hybrid precoding algorithm
1st stage: Single-user analog beamforming design for max. desired power
2nd stage: Multi-user interference management
Low-complexity near-optimal algorithm
*A. Alkhateeb, G. Leus, and R. W. Heath Jr, Limited feedback hybrid precoding for multi-user millimeter wave systems, IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communications, vol.14, no.11, pp.6481-6494, Nov. 2015

Webinar Series 37
 Channel estimation in the hybrid architecture
Concatenated N x M training
t t
H RF Mr received precoding matrix
chain ADC
vectors
Np-sparse matrix
Baseband
NrxG of size GxG NtxG RF
Combining
/
Combining
Baseband Nr x Mr training noise
Processing
combining matrix matrix
RF
Dictionaries of TX/RX chain ADC Mt x Mt containing
array steering/response training symbols
vectors with quantized angles
Channel estimation is challenging at mmWave
Low SNR before beamforming
Large channel matrices are seen through analog BF
Compressive channel estimation leveraging channel sparsity
R. Heath, N. Gonzlez-Prelcic, S. Rangan, W. Roh and A. Sayeed, An Overview of Signal Processing Techniques for Millimeter Wave MIMO Systems, IEEE JSTSP, 2016

Webinar Series 38
Communicating with one-bit ADCs
2b bits per complex dimension
RF 1-bit
Chain
1-bit
ADC
ADC With few bits

Transmit H Baseband
Baseband
Processing Processing
Precoding
With one bit
Nt Nr
RF 1-bit
1-bit
Chain ADC
ADC
threshold in real / imaginary
1 bit, 240 Gs/s
10mW much less at 4 Gs/s
Different impact on system design
No need of ACG
May have higher baseband complexity
Hard to estimate the channel, exploit sparsity using 1-bit CS algorithms*
*J. Mo, P. Schniter, N. G. Prelcic and R. W. Heath, Jr. Channel Estimation in Millimeter Wave MIMO Systems with One-Bit Quantization, Asilomar 2014
**C. Rusu, R. Mendez-Rial, N. Gonzalez-Prelcic and R. W. Heath, "Adaptive One-Bit Compressive Sensing with Application to Low-Precision Receivers at
mmWave," 2015 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), San Diego, CA, 2015, pp. 1-6.

Webinar Series 39
MIMO and 5G: technologies and challenges

massive mmWave
MIMO MIMO

Enable FDD mode with low overhead Fast beam adaptation

Mitigation of pilot contamination in TDD mode Wideband channel estimation

Array calibration MU hybrid precoding in wideband channels

Mitigate hardware impairments Low resolution architectures

Massive MIMO at mmWave Joint estimation of array geometry and CSI

Webinar Series 40