Exploring the possibility of Full-Duplex operations in mmWave 5G systems

Recent developments in the communications industry to accommodate user demand for ubiquitous, instantaneous over the air access to multimedia rich content has made spectrum utilization efficiency one of the key research topics. Full-Duplex radios have great potential to improve spectrum utilization efficiency and are well-studied for below 6 GHz applications. In this paper, we explore the possibility of mmWave Full-Duplex operation in 5G. We group the Full-Duplex radio system components into four modules: antenna systems, analog frontend and digital baseband self-interference cancellers, and protocol stack enhancements. We create a system model to analyze link-budget and determine the usable range for Full-Duplex operation by focusing on antenna systems, analog RF frontend design assumptions, and the channel models. We also highlight tradeoffs for employing cancellation techniques and criteria for protocol stack enhancements.