Design of a practical and compact mm-wave MIMO system with optimized capacity and phased arrays

Abstract

In this paper we evaluate the feasibility of short range outdoor mm-wave MIMO links in the 70 GHz portion of the E-band (71–76 GHz). We use phased arrays in order to strongly reduce the impact of the multipath components, thus making the channel mainly line-of-sight (LOS). We design the array using a simple patch as a single element and simulate the performances for a 200 m link and a MIMO system with equal element spacing at the transmitter and the receiver. Each node of the MIMO system consists of a uniform rectangular array (URA) where the single element is a patch antenna, in order to achieve higher gains and narrow beams. Such configuration is much more compact compared to the antennas currently employed for the same bandwidth. We optimize the interelement distances at the transmitter and the receiver and evaluate the capacity achievable with different array sizes. The results show that, for the proposed link budget, capacity up to 29 bit/s/Hz is achievable at a range of 200 m, with practical dimensions. We also show that the beamforming capabilities make the design much more flexible than the single reflector antenna systems. In the last part of the paper, we verify that our antenna can also operate in rainy conditions and longer ranges.