mmWave Mobile Communication under Hypercellular Architecture

To meet the ever growing traffic in mobile communication, mmWave (millimeter-Wave) frequency bands have gained considerable attention for having a greater amount of bandwidth available than the current cellular spectrum below 3 GHz. Several test systems have been reported on recently to validate the possibility of mmWave links in mobile scenarios. However, there still exist practical issues to enable the application of mmWave in mobile communication, including reliability and cost. In this article, we present some new designs that address these issues, where system architecture, transceiver architecture, and related issues such as circuits and antenna arrays are considered. Hypercellular architecture is applied in mmWave mobile networks to overcome blockage problems, and a Butler-matrix-based HBF (Hybrid Beamforming) architecture is considered in an mmWave link. Simulations and experimental results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the Butler-matrix-based system.