Thomas Henige

High-throughput beamforming receiver for millimeter wave mobile communication

In this paper, we present a novel FPGA-based high-throughput beamforming MIMO receiver for millimeter wave mobile communication. With vast spectrum and small antenna element size, millimeter wave communication becomes very attractive and promising to support next generation mobile communication (5G). However, the high data rate requirement challenges both algorithm and architecture. In order to support the high data rate and to reduce the overhead of selecting the best beam pair, we propose a novel beamforming synchronization scheme more suitable for mobile communication. By further optimizing the algorithm and the architecture, we present a complete mobile receiver based on FPGA, which includes RF frontend, ADC, beamforming control, synchronization, channel estimator, soft MAP detector, and channel decoder. The design operates at 28 GHz carrier frequency with 500 MHz bandwidth. The throughput can reach 1.52 Gbps. We also performed the indoor and outdoor over-the-air transmission field tests. This work provides a platform for future millimeter wave mobile communication research.

Gigabit rate achieving low-power LDPC codes: Design and architecture

The quality of any communication system is greatly determined by the performance excellence of the selected channel coding scheme. In this work, we propose algorithms for designing LDPC channel coding schemes. The proposed designs are suitable for achieving Gigabit communications with relatively low-power consumption. We design LDPC code family with fixed block length and no puncturing. Also, starting with an LDPC code base-family, we construct LDPC code families with longer block length but decodable using the same hardware as the base-family. We propose a unified decoder architecture, which can decode all LDPC codes in the designed base-family as well as all LDPC codes in the derived code families with longer block length.

Millimeter-wave base station for mobile broadband communication

In this paper a millimeter-wave base station operating at 28GHz for mobile communication is introduced. This base station employs 64-elements antenna phased-array to enable adaptive beamforming required for mobile communication. The phased-array is constructed of sub-arrays for optimal trade-off between performance and required coverage and beamforming capability. The phased array antenna is integrated with the transceivers on the same printed circuit board (PCB) using industry standard manufacturing process to minimize the cost and routing loss. The achieved link budget fulfills the requirements of the LOS and NLOS mobile communication in this band for distances in excess of 1Km. The field measurements depict an end-to-end EVM of better than -24dB for a 16QAM OFDM signal with 500MHz bandwidth (BW).

High throughput millimeter-wave MIMO beamforming system for short range communication

The interest in short range communication has significantly increased in the last decade with the introduction of different wireless connectivity standards and their evolution such as IEEE802.11n/ac and IEEE802.11ad. New demands for higher resolution multimedia applications such as UHD push for higher data rates to exceed 30Gbps. This high data rate demand requires short range standards to adopt a new approach to accommodate these rates. Millimeter wave enable high bandwidth usage which implies higher capacity to accommodate 10-100Gbps data rates. However, the high data rate pose big challenges to both the system algorithm and architecture. In this paper, we propose a novel FPGA-based high-throughput beamforming MIMO system for millimeter wave short range communication. We present our first realization of a complete millimeter wave short range communication system, which includes RF frontend, ADC/DAC, beamforming control, synchronization, channel estimation, MIMO precoding/detection, and channel encoder/decoder. The design works at millimeter carrier frequency with 500MHz bandwidth and 2-channel MIMO Beamforming. We show realtime application test results as captured in the millimeter wave system.

Low-power dual quantization-domain decoding for LDPC codes

In this paper we propose a new dual quantization-domain LDPC decoder, which requires only 3-bit messages between the check nodes and the variable nodes. To reduce complexity and save power, check nodes processing is entirely in the 3-bit domain. However, to avoid loss in performance, the variable nodes processing is in a higher bit precision domain. A non-linear mapping is used to map the messages from one quantization domain to the other. Simulations and hardware evaluation of the proposed decoder showed greater than 50% reduction in power consumption with only 0.1 dB (0.2 dB) loss in bit-error-performance when compared to a reference 5-bits scaled Min-Sum decoder over the AWGN (fading) channel.

High-Throughput Low-Power LDPC Decoder and Code Design

In this paper, we present a method for creating LDPC codes which are specifically designed to be hardware friendly. Our method involves constraining the cyclic shift values in the base H-matrix to reduce the complexity of the cyclic shift hardware. We show that the decoder hardware implementation for these codes has higher throughput and lower power consumption than decoders designed for traditional LDPC codes. We provide results showing that these codes maintain the error rate performance expected of LDPC codes while achieving these throughput and power consumption improvements.

Mobile station radio frequency unit for 5G communications at 28GHz

This paper presents a millimeter wave mobile station radio frequency unit (MS RFU) operating at 28GHz with two receive (Rx) and two transmit (Tx) chains for MIMO or diversity where each chain utilizes beam steering to enhance signal to noise ratio (SNR). Each phased array employs 4 substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna elements incorporated within the main printed circuit board (PCB). The RFU supports up to 800MHz signal BW and 64QAM OFDM signal with -27dB EVM.