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RF Chain Reduction for MIMO Systems: a Hardware Prototype 5296 IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 14, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2020 RF Chain Reduction for MIMO Systems: A Hardware Prototype Tierui Gong , Student Member, IEEE, Nir Shlezinger , Member, IEEE, Shahar Stein Ioushua , Student Member, IEEE, Moshe Namer, Zhijia Yang , and Yonina C. Eldar , Fellow, IEEE Abstract—Radio frequency (RF) chain circuits play a major I. INTRODUCTION role in digital receiver architectures, allowing passband commu- nication signals to be processed in baseband. When operating at EXT-generation wireless systems are required to meet a high frequencies, these circuits tend to be costly. This increased N growing throughput demand [1]. Two key technologies cost imposes a major limitation on future multiple-input–multiple- offer the potential of providing dramatic increase in spectral output (MIMO) communication technologies. A common approach efficiency. The first scheme equips the cellular base stations to mitigate the increased cost is to utilize hybrid architectures, in which the received signal is combined in analog into a lower (BS) with a large number of antennas, realizing a massive dimension, thus reducing the number of RF chains. In this article multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) system [2]–[4]. The we study the design and hardware implementation of hybrid archi- second method explores the millimeter wave frequency band, tectures via minimizing channel estimation error. We first derive overcoming the congestion of the conventional spectrum [5]. A the optimal solution for complex-gain combiners and propose an major drawback of utilizing these technologies stems from the alternating optimization algorithm for phase-shifter combiners. We then present a hardware prototype implementing analog com- fact that radio frequency (RF) chain circuits, which allow the bining for RF chain reduction. The prototype consists of a specially passband communication signals to be processed in baseband designed configurable combining board as well as a dedicated (BB) and are, thus, an essential component in digital receiver experimental setup. Our hardware prototype allows us evaluating architectures, lead to increased cost and power consumption the effect of analog combining in MIMO systems using actual when operating at high carrier frequencies. This increased communication signals. The experimental study, which focuses on channel estimation accuracy in MIMO channels, demonstrates that cost becomes a major practical bottleneck when implementing using the proposed prototype, the achievable channel estimation MIMO antenna arrays operating at millimeter wave bands in performance is within a small gap in a statistical sense from that which each antenna is connected to an RF chain. obtained using a costly receiver in which each antenna is connected One of the common approaches to mitigate this increased cost to a dedicated RF chain. is to utilize fewer RF chains [6]–[8], namely, implementing RF Index Terms—Channel estimation, hybrid receivers, multiple- chain reduction. This reduction is carried out by introducing input–multiple-output (MIMO) communications. additional analog hardware, which most commonly consists of controllable phase shifters and adders [6], typically designed to optimize the achievable rate [7] or the channel estimation Manuscript received August 13, 2019; revised November 18, 2019; accepted February 15, 2020. Date of publication March 30, 2020; date of current version accuracy [8]. In such systems, the analog signal observed at November 24, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National Key the antenna array is combined into a lower dimension digital Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2017YFA0700304, signal using dedicated hardware [9]. When utilizing such hybrid in part by the Israel Science Foundation under Grant 0100101, and in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant architectures, the number of RF chains, and, hence, the number 646804-ERC-COG-BNYQ. (Corresponding authors: Nir Shlezinger and Zhijia of inputs processed in the digital domain is smaller than the Yang.) number of antennas. Receiver designs implementing RF chain Tierui Gong is with the Key Laboratory of Networked Control Systems, State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chi- reduction using analog combining have been the focus of ex- nese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China, and the Institutes tensive research in recent years [9]–[23]. These previous works for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, include the design of different analog combining structures [9], Shenyang 110169, China, and also with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China (e-mail: [email protected]). [13]–[15], [20], [21], hybrid architectures with low-resolution Nir Shlezinger and Yonina C. Eldar are with the Faculty of Mathematics analog-to-digital conversion [10], [11], [16]–[19], [22], and the and Computer Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel integration of dynamic analog combining as part of the physical (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). Shahar Stein Ioushua is with the School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv antenna technology [12]. The theoretical maturity of the concept University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel (e-mail: [email protected]). of MIMO communications with RF chain reduction suggests the Moshe Namer is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technion, Haifa need to demonstrate and evaluate the implementation of such 32000, Israel (e-mail: [email protected]). Zhijia Yang is with the Key Laboratory of Networked Control Systems, systems in hardware, which is the focus of this article. State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese We present a prototype of a configurable analog combin- Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China, and also with the Institutes ing hardware board. Our analog combiner hardware can real- for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110169, China (e-mail: [email protected]). ize different RF chain reduction strategies, including complex Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSYST.2020.2975653 gain combiners [22], [23], phase shifter networks [9], [13], 1937-9234 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information. Authorized licensed use limited to: Weizmann Institute of Science. Downloaded on November 29,2020 at 13:24:43 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply. GONG et al.: RF CHAIN REDUCTION FOR MIMO SYSTEMS: A HARDWARE PROTOTYPE 5297 and antenna selection techniques [18]. The board is designed gains of extremely high phase resolution, allowing reli- to experimentally evaluate MIMO communications with RF able comparison of different hybrid architectures using chain reduction applied to actual up-converted passband sig- passband signals. The prototype is used for evaluating nals. Similarly to [24] and [25], we design a dedicated analog our method, demonstrating its ability to approach the combiner hardware for experimental purposes. While [25] used performance of variable gain combiners using constrained RF integrated circuits, focusing on millimeter wave bands, our phase shifters. prototype targets the sub-6 GHz frequency range, as in [24]. The The rest of this article is organized as follows: In Section II, main advantage of our prototype over [24] is in the improved we formulate the model for wireless communication with RF phase resolution, which stems from the usage of dedicated vector chain reduction and present the channel estimation problem. multipliers, allowing to more accurately set the phase of the Section III details the algorithm implemented for configuring the complex coefficients and, thus, to better test analytically de- analog combiner, and Section IV presents a detailed description rived analog combiners. While our prototype supports a smaller of the prototype and its components. Experimental results are number of antennas compared to [24], we propose a method given in Section V, and Section VI provides concluding remarks. for using it to experiment in scenarios with larger number of Throughout the article, we use boldface lowercase letters to antennas using a virtual channel extension. denote vectors, e.g., x, and the ith element of x is written as (x)i. Our main design criteria is the channel estimation accuracy, Boldface uppercase letters are used for matrices, e.g., M, whose using an analog combining configuration algorithm, which ex- (i, k)th entry is (M)i,k and ith column is (M):,i.Weusevec(·) tends and improves upon the method suggested in [13]. The to denote the vectorization operator, In is the n × n identity proposed algorithm uses alternating optimization to obtain a matrix, ⊗ is the Kronecker product, ·is the l2 norm, ·F suitable analog combining configuration under structure con- is the Frobenius norm, tr(·) is the trace operator, while (·)T and straints, such as the requirement to utilize unit gain coefficients (·)∗ denote the transpose and complex transpose, respectively. arising in phase shifter networks. Our method achieved closer The proper-complex Gaussian distribution is denoted as CN, and feasible approximations of the optimal unconstrained combiner C is the set of complex numbers. The expectation of a random compared to the algorithm of [13] by introducing an additional variable x is represented by
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