System Budget to System Realization-A 5G mm-wave Beamformer Perspective

A comprehensive 5G system design methodology targeting 1Gbits/s next generation cellular communication is presented with associated design trade-offs. With an emphasis on beamforming to overcome mm-wave propagation challenges, a systematic link budget analysis has been carried out from 3GPP 5G NR standards to derive individual specifications for an RF front end module and RFIC. A detailed analysis of the effect of non-idealities on key figure of merits for receive and transmit chains is presented. Practical beamforming simulations is performed using a 2X4 dual polarized patch antenna array. It is also demonstrated that floorplan, power and thermal requirements play an important role in terms of decisions on technology-nodes, package-substrate selection and heterogenous integration.