Digital Beamforming Techniques for Future Communications Systems

5G is the next mobile generation that will support the need for more data applications, higher speeds, more capacity, lower latency and increased performance. New cellular architectures and technologies are being investigated in order to meet the growing demand for wireless services. One example is the use of beamforming. Beamforming is a signal processing technique used to direct the transmission or reception of signals. Directional beamforming is produced by adjusting the elements of each antenna vector, until an optimal gain is obtained. The main contributions of this paper consist on the evaluation of the performance of a 5G communication system, using massive MIMO technology embedded with digital beamforming techniques. A comparison of two digital beamforming methods proposed for future 5G systems, EBB and GoB beamforming, is assessed.