Advanced antenna solutions for 5G wireless access

The use of multiple transmit antennas at the base station and device side play an important role already in current 4G/LTE systems, enhancing system performance and extending the data rates that can be provided to the end user. For the future (5G) wireless-access solution advanced antenna solutions are expected to play an even more pronounced role. 5G wireless access needs to provide substantially higher data rates, up to the multi-Gbps range in specific scenarios and with hundreds of Mbps to be generally available in urban/suburban environments, as well as handle traffic volumes hundreds of times higher than today. Advanced multi-antenna transmission will be key to fulfill both these requirements. At the same time, 5G wireless is expected to extend to frequency-range-of-operation beyond 10 GHz and into the mmw range. The corresponding smaller wave length will be an enabler of more advanced antenna configurations with a much larger number of controllable antenna elements compared to the antenna configurations of today. In this paper we discuss advanced antenna solutions for 5G wireless access, what are the opportunities, alternatives, and possible obstacles.