Introduction to mmWave massive MIMO

Wireless communication systems have historically undergone a revolution about once every decade (e.g., an entirely new standard). We are now thinking about 5G, which is at the exploratory research phase, with industry consensus hinting toward commercialization around 2020 with widespread adoption by 2025. The market is demanding that 5G should support a much higher system capacity (100-1000. ×) than current 4G systems, which are already close to the Shannon limit in point-to-point communication systems. To address the 5G design target, the information theory suggests that there are predominantly three key approaches to achieving the several orders of magnitude increase in system capacity: ultra-dense networks (UDN), large quantities of new bandwidth, and high spectrum efficiency. Fortunately, millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive MIMO provide a judicious way to harness all of these approaches to provide a wireless networking platform constituting a wireless network of small cells and providing very high speed data rate. This chapter aims to briefly introduce mmWave massive MIMO from a high level. Specifically, the requirements of key capabilities for future 5G recently defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will be introduced first. Then, the potential 5G network architecture based on mmWave massive MIMO that meets the harsh 5G requirements will be described, followed by the corresponding challenges for realizing mmWave massive MIMO. Finally, the structure and key contributions of this book will be summarized.