Out-of-Band mmWave Beamforming and Communications to Achieve Low Latency and High Energy Efficiency in 5G Systems

We propose a hybrid RF/millimeter wave (mmWave) architecture for 5G cellular systems. Communication in the mmWave band faces significant challenges due to variable channels, intermittent connectivity, and high energy usage. Moreover, speeds for electronic processing of data is of the same order as typical rates for mmWave interface. Therefore, the use of complex algorithms for tracking channel variations and adjusting resources accordingly is practically out-of-reach. To alleviate the challenges associated with mmWave communications, our proposed architecture integrates the RF and mmWave interfaces for beamforming and data transfer, and exploits the spatio-temporal correlations between the interfaces. Based on extensive experimentation in indoor and outdoor settings, we demonstrate that an integrated RF/mmWave signaling and channel estimation scheme can remedy the problem of high energy usage and delay associated with digital and analog beamforming, respectively. In addition, cooperation between two interfaces at the higher layers effectively addresses the high delays caused by highly intermittent connectivity in mmWave channels. Subsequently, we formulate an optimal scheduling problem over the RF and mmWave interfaces where the goal is to maximize the delay-constrained throughput of the mmWave interface. We prove using subadditivity analysis that the optimal scheduling policy is based on a single threshold that can be easily adopted despite high link variations. We design an optimal scheduler that opportunistically schedules the packets over the mmWave interface, while the RF link acts as a fallback mechanism to prevent high delay.