A Millimeter-Wave Phased Array-Aided 5G Communication Prototype: Evaluation in an Indoor Scenario

In this paper, a millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G communication prototype composed of a phased-array antenna and a transceiver is proposed. The prototype involves a custom-manufactured planar active phased array antenna featuring linear polarization, which incorporates a beamforming integrated circuit (BFIC) comprising an
$8\times 8$
-element planar array. The 27 GHz transceiver is a prototype fabricated with off-the-shelf components and designed to downconvert/upconvert signals from 3.5 GHz to 27 GHz. Additionally, a 3GPP-inspired gNodeB based on the FR2 5G signal, which introduces a phase tracking reference signal (PT-RS) and implements a phase noise cancellation (PNC) algorithm in the user equipment (UE) node, was emulated. A measurement campaign in an indoor scenario, including validation using commercial equipment and a comparison with a passive antenna for the Q-PSK and 16-QAM modulation schemes has been carried out. We provide several key performance indicators (KPIs) including throughput, EVM, and BLER, to demonstrate the statistical performance of the proposed prototype. The obtained results support that the integration of a phased-array antenna is a promising technology for the future of wireless communications.