Millimeter-wave technology trends for 5G and wireless transmission applications and technologies

High interest in millimeter-wave bands has risen in the recent years due to the enormous amount of under-utilized bandwidth that lies in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The significant advantages offered by the propagation characteristics in terms of frequency re-usability and large channel bandwidths, make millimeter-wave, and sub-millimeter, suitable for the very high capacities required by 5G enhanced Mobile BroadBand (10 Gpbs peak throughput and 10 Mbps/m2). The millimeter-wave bands can be suitably used for the access networks to increase the throughput to the User Equipment and backhaul/front-haul of the base stations. At the same time the use of millimeter-wave bands, thanks to the very compact antenna size makes products “blend” in the environment, allows the densification of the cells in dense urban scenarios. From the considerations outlined so far it is relatively easy to evince the importance that the research will play in the next years in the many areas that will be necessary to cover in order to develop systems capable to operate at very high capacity with spectral efficiency, high performance, at frequencies up to 175 GHz in medium term and above 240 GHz in the long term.