SDR Implementation of an End-to-End mmWave Testbed Based on Phased Antenna Array

The millimeter wave (mmWave)has become one of the key technologies in the fifth generation (5G)cellular network due to its potential in providing huge undeveloped bandwidths and increasing the communication capacity. Combining with beamforming based on large scale antenna arrays, mmWave communication shows great prospects for application. In this paper, we design and implement a 5G New Radio (NR)based end-to-end mmWave testbed, using software-defined radios (SDR)as baseband processing units and phased antenna arrays as beamforming devices. We first introduce the hardware architecture as well as the devices adopted in the testbed. Then, detailed physical layer design and implementation according to 5G NR standard are provided. We also design a beam codebook containing 64 beam patterns. Further, beam management module for aligning the transmitting and receiving beams is implemented based on the designed beam codebook. The experimental results validate the good performance of the mmWave testbed and demonstrate the feasibility of phased antenna array for beamforming.