Communication and Localization with Extremely Large Linear Distributed Lens Antenna Arrays

The computational complexity and hardware cost of extremely large antenna array systems can be reduced by lens antenna arrays, which require a small number of radiofrequency chains. However, the window-effect energy focusing property of extremely large lens antenna arrays may cause multiuser resolution reduction, and the semicircle design may lead to prohibitive spatial requirements. To address these problems, we propose a new extremely large linear distributed lens antenna array design, called ELLD-Lens. Specifically, we first deduce the array response of ELLD-Lens, which reveals the curve energy focusing property. Then, we realize localization and channel estimation in ELLD-Lens systems by utilizing the newtonized orthogonal matching pursuit (NOMP) algorithm, which is able to achieve performance close to the Cramer-Rao lower bound. Finally, we analyze the potential of multi-user communication of ELLD-Lens. Numerical results indicate the effectiveness of NOMP in ELLD-Lens systems for localization and show that, when equipped with a minimum mean square error receiver, ELLD-Lens achieves a higher multi-user resolution compared with extremely large lens and uniform linear arrays.