Achieving high-rate communication with accurate localization and wireless environment sensing has emerged as an important trend of beyond-fifth and sixth generation cellular systems. Extension of the antenna array to an extremely large scale is a potential technology for achieving such goals. However, the super massive operating antennas significantly increases the computational complexity of the system. Motivated by the inherent advantages of lens antenna arrays in reducing system complexity, we consider communication and localization problems with an \uline{ex}tremely large \uline{lens} antenna array, which we call "ExLens". Since radiative near-field property emerges in the setting, we derive the closed-form array response of the lens antenna array with spherical wave, which includes the array response obtained on the basis of uniform plane wave as a special case. Our derivation result reveals a window effect for energy focusing property of ExLens, which indicates that ExLens has great potential in position sensing and multi-user communication. We also propose an effective method for location and channel parameters estimation, which is able to achieve the localization performance close to the Cramér-Rao lower bound. Finally, we examine the multi-user communication performance of ExLens that serves coexisting near-field and far-field users. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation method and show that ExLens with a minimum mean square error receiver achieves significant spectral efficiency gains and complexity-and-cost reductions compared with a uniform linear array.
The requirement of high data-rate in the fifth generation wireless systems (5G) calls for the ultimate utilization of the wide bandwidth in the mmWave frequency band. Researchers seeking to compensate for mmWave's high path loss and to achieve both gain and directivity have proposed that mmWave multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems make use of beamforming systems. Hybrid beamforming in mmWave demonstrates promising performance in achieving high gain and directivity by using phase shifters at the analog processing block. What remains a problem, however, is the actual implementation of m…
In this paper, we consider the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for estimation of a lens-embedded antenna array with deterministic parameters. Unlike CRLB of uniform linear array (ULA), it is noted that CRLB for direction of arrival (DoA) of lens-embedded antenna array is dominated by not only angle but characteristics of lens. Derivation is based on the approximation that amplitude of received signal with lens is approximated to Gaussian function. We confirmed that parameters needed to design a lens can be derived by standard deviation of Gaussian, which represents characteristic of received sig…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques have been recently advanced to tremendously improve the performance of wireless networks. However, the use of very large antenna arrays brings new issues, such as the significantly increased hardware cost and signal processing cost and complexity. In order to reap the enormous gain of massive MIMO and yet reduce its cost to an affordable level, this paper proposes a novel system design by integrating an electromagnetic (EM) lens with the large antenna array, termed \emph{electromagnetic lens antenna} (ELA). An ELA has the capability of f…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology for the fifth-generation (5G) wireless system. However, the large number of antennas used and the wide signal bandwidth in mmWave systems render the conventional multi-antenna techniques increasingly costly in terms of signal processing complexity, hardware implementation, and power consumption. In this article, we investigate cost-effective mmWave communications by first providing an overview of the main existing techniques that offer different trade-offs between performance and cost, and then focusing our discussion on a promis…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology for 5G cellular systems. To compensate for the severe path loss in mmWave systems, large antenna arrays are generally used to achieve significant beamforming gains. However, due to the high hardware and power consumption cost associated with radio frequency (RF) chains, it is desirable to achieve the large-antenna gains, but with only limited number of RF chains for mmWave communications. To this end, we study in this paper a new lens antenna array enabled mmWave MIMO communication system. We first show that the array response of…
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication and network densification hold great promise for achieving high-rate communication in next-generation wireless networks. Cloud radio access network (CRAN), in which low-complexity remote radio heads (RRHs) coordinated by a central unit (CU) are deployed to serve users in a distributed manner, is a cost-effective solution to achieve network densification. However, when operating over a large bandwidth in the mmWave frequencies, the digital fronthaul links in a CRAN would be easily saturated by the large amount of sampled and quantized signals to be transfe…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques have been recently advanced to tremendously improve the performance of wireless communication networks. However, the use of very large antenna arrays at the base stations (BSs) brings new issues, such as the significantly increased hardware and signal processing costs. In order to reap the enormous gain of massive MIMO and yet reduce its cost to an affordable level, this paper proposes a novel system design by integrating an electromagnetic (EM) lens with the large antenna array, termed the EM-lens enabled MIMO. The EM lens has the capab…
This paper proposes a new multiple access technique based on the millimeter wave lens-based reconfigurable antenna systems. In particular, to support a large number of groups of users with different angles of departures (AoDs), we integrate recently proposed reconfigurable antenna multiple access (RAMA) into non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). The proposed technique, named reconfigurable antenna NOMA (RA-NOMA), divides the users with respect to their AoDs and channel gains. Users with different AoDs and comparable channel gains are served via RAMA while users with the same AoDs but differen…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication by utilizing lens antenna arrays is a promising technique for realizing cost-effective 5G wireless systems with large MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) but only limited radio frequency (RF) chains. This paper studies an uplink multi-user mmWave single-sided lens MIMO system, where only the base station (BS) is equipped with a full-dimensional (FD) lens antenna array with both elevation and azimuth angle resolution capabilities, and each mobile station (MS) employs the conventional uniform planar array (UPA) without the lens. By exploiting the angle-de…
Extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) communications correspond to systems whose antenna size is so large that conventional assumptions, such as uniform plane wave (UPW) impingement, are no longer valid. This paper studies the channel modelling and performance analysis of XL-MIMO communication based on the generic spherical wavefront propagation model. First, for the single-user uplink/downlink communication with the optimal maximum ratio combining/transmission (MRC/MRT), we rigorously derive a new closed-form expression for the resulting signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), w…
Millimeter-wave massive MIMO with lens antenna array can considerably reduce the number of required radio-frequency (RF) chains by beam selection. However, beam selection requires the base station to acquire the accurate information of beamspace channel. This is a challenging task, as the size of beamspace channel is large while the number of RF chains is limited. In this paper, we investigate the beamspace channel estimation problem in mmWave massive MIMO systems with lens antenna array. Specifically, we first design an adaptive selecting network for mmWave massive MIMO systems with lens ante…
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) systems relying on lens antenna arrays are capable of achieving a high antenna-gain at a considerably reduced number of radio frequency (RF) chains via beam selection. However, the traditional beam selection network suffers from significant performance loss in wideband systems due to the effect of beam squint. In this paper, we propose a phase shifter-aided beam selection network, which enables a single RF chain to support multiple focused-energy beams, for mitigating the beam squint in wideband mmWave MIMO systems. Based on this arch…
We analyze the uplink radio frequency (RF) interference from a multiplicity of single-antenna user equipments transmitting to a cellular base station (BS) within the same time-frequency resource. The BS is assumed to operate with a lens antenna array, which induces additional focusing gain for the incoming signals. Considering line-of-sight propagation conditions, we characterize the multiuser RF interference properties via approximation of the mainlobe interference as well as the effective interferer probability. The results derived in this application note are foundational to more general mu…
In this paper, we investigate the uplink performance of cell-free (CF) extremely large-scale multiple-input-multipleoutput (XL-MIMO) systems, which is a promising technique for future wireless communications. More specifically, we consider the practical scenario with multiple base stations (BSs) and multiple user equipments (UEs). To this end, we derive exact achievable spectral efficiency (SE) expressions for any combining scheme. It is worth noting that we derive the closed-form SE expressions for the CF XL-MIMO with maximum ratio (MR) combining. Numerical results show that the SE performanc…
By employing the lens antenna array, beamspace MIMO can utilize beam selection to reduce the number of required RF chains in mmWave massive MIMO systems without obvious performance loss. However, to achieve the capacityapproaching performance, beam selection requires the accurate information of beamspace channel of large size, which is challenging, especially when the number of RF chains is limited. To solve this problem, in this paper we propose a reliable support detection (SD)-based channel estimation scheme. Specifically, we propose to decompose the total beamspace channel estimation probl…
Mobile communication networks were designed to mainly support ubiquitous wireless communications, yet they are also expected to achieve radio sensing capabilities in the near future. However, most prior studies on radio sensing usually rely on far-field assumption with uniform plane wave (UPW) models. With the ever-increasing antenna size, together with the growing demands to sense nearby targets, the conventional far-field UPW assumption may become invalid. Therefore, this paper studies near-field radio sensing with extremely large-scale (XL) antenna arrays, where the more general uniform sph…
The emerging millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) with lens antenna arrays, which is also known as "beamspace MIMO", can effectively reduce the required number of power-hungry radio frequency (RF) chains. Therefore, it has been considered as a promising technique for the upcoming 5G communications and beyond. However, most current studies on beamspace MIMO have not taken into account the important power leakage problem in beamspace channels, which possibly leads to a significant degradation in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the system sum-rate. To this en…
Millimeter wave signals and large antenna arrays are considered enabling technologies for future 5G networks. Despite their benefits for achieving high data rate communications, their potential advantages for tracking of the location of the user terminals are largely undiscovered. In this paper, we propose a novel support detection-based channel training method for frequency selective millimeter-wave (mm-wave) multiple-input-multiple-output system with lens antenna arrays. We show that accurate position and orientation estimation and tracking is possible using signals from a single transmitter…
In this paper, we study two novel massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmitter architectures for millimeter wave (mmWave) communications which comprise few active antennas, each equipped with a dedicated radio frequency (RF) chain, that illuminate a nearby large intelligent reflecting/transmitting surface (IRS/ITS). The IRS (ITS) consists of a large number of low-cost and energy-efficient passive antenna elements which are able to reflect (transmit) a phase-shifted version of the incident electromagnetic field. Similar to lens array (LA) antennas, IRS/ITS-aided antenna architectur…
Exploiting wavefront curvature enables localization with limited infrastructure and hardware complexity. With the introduction of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), new opportunities arise, in particular when the RIS is functioning as a lens receiver. We investigate the localization of a transmitter using a RIS-based lens in close proximity to a single receive antenna element attached to reception radio frequency chain. We perform a Fisher information analysis, evaluate the impact of different lens configurations, and propose a two-stage localization algorithm. Our results indicate th…
This paper investigates wireless communications based on a new antenna array architecture, termed modular extremely large-scale array (XL-array), where an extremely large number of antenna elements are regularly arranged on a common platform in a modular manner. Each module consists of a flexible/moderate number of antenna elements, and different modules are separated with an inter-module spacing that is typically much larger than the inter-element spacing/signal wavelength for ease of deployment. By properly modelling the variations of signal phase, amplitude and projected aperture across dif…
Extremely large-scale array (XL-array) is envisioned to achieve super-high spectral efficiency in future wireless networks. Different from the existing works that mostly focus on the near-field communications, we consider in this paper a new and practical scenario, called mixed near- and far-field communications, where there exist both near- and far-field users in the network. For this scenario, we first obtain a closed-form expression for the inter-user interference at the near-field user caused by the far-field beam by using Fresnel functions, based on which the effects of the number of BS a…
Next generation wireless base stations and access points will transmit and receive using extremely massive numbers of antennas. A promising technology for realizing such massive arrays in a dynamically controllable and scalable manner with reduced cost and power consumption utilizes surfaces of radiating metamaterial elements, known as metasurfaces. To date, metasurfaces are mainly considered in the context of wireless communications as passive reflecting devices, aiding conventional transceivers in shaping the propagation environment. This article presents an alternative application of metasu…
The recent concept of beamspace multiple input multiple output (MIMO) can significantly reduce the number of required radio-frequency (RF) chains in millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive MIMO systems without obvious performance loss. However, the fundamental limit of existing beamspace MIMO is that, the number of supported users cannot be larger than the number of RF chains at the same time-frequency resources. To break this fundamental limit, in this paper we propose a new spectrum and energy efficient mmWave transmission scheme that integrates the concept of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) …
Extremely large-scale array (XL-array) communications correspond to systems whose antenna sizes are so large that the scatterers and/or users may no longer be located in the far-field region. By discarding the conventional far-field uniform plane wave (UPW) assumption, this letter studies the near-field spatial correlation of XL-array communications, by taking into account the more generic non-uniform spherical wave (NUSW) characteristics. It is revealed that different from the far-field channel spatial correlation which only depends on the power angular spectrum (PAS), the near-field spatial …
Wireless communications with extremely large-scale array (XL-array) correspond to systems whose antenna sizes are so large that conventional modelling assumptions, such as uniform plane wave (UPW) impingement, are longer valid. This paper studies the mathematical modelling and performance analysis of XL-array communications. By deviating from the conventional modelling approach that treats the array elements as sizeless points, we explicitly model their physical area/aperture, which enables a unified modelling for the classical discrete antenna arrays and the emerging continuous surfaces. As s…
The large spectrum available in the millimeter-Wave (mmWave) band has emerged as a promising solution for meeting the huge capacity requirements of the 5th generation (5G) wireless networks. However, to fully harness the potential of mmWave communications, obstacles such as severe path loss, channel sparsity and hardware complexity should be overcome. In this paper, we introduce a generalized reconfigurable antenna multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architecture that takes advantage of lens-based reconfigurable antennas. The considered antennas can support multiple radiation patterns simult…
In this paper, a secure spatial modulation (SM) system with artificial noise (AN)-aided is investigated. To achieve higher secrecy rate (SR) in such a system, two high-performance schemes of transmit antenna selection (TAS), leakage-based and maximum secrecy rate (Max-SR), are proposed and a generalized Euclidean distance-optimized antenna selection (EDAS) method is designed. From simulation results and analysis, the four TAS schemes have an decreasing order: Max-SR, leakage-based, generalized EDAS, and random (conventional), in terms of SR performance. However, the proposed Max-SR method requ…
In High Speed Train Communications (HSTC), the most challenging issue is coping with the extremely fast fading channel. Compared with its static counterpart, channel estimation on the move consumes excessive energy and spectrum to achieve similar performance. To address this issue, we exploit the delay correlation inherent in the linear spatial-temporal structure of multi-antenna array, based on which the rapid fading channel may be approximated by a virtual slow-fading channel. Subsequently, error probability and spectral efficiency are re-examined for this staticized channel. In particular, …
The number of users that can be spatially multiplexed by a wireless access point depends on the aperture of its antenna array. When the aperture increases and wavelength shrinks, "new" electromagnetic phenomena can be utilized to further enhance network capacity. In this chapter, we describe how extremely large aperture arrays (ELAA) can extend the radiative near-field region to kilometer distances. We demonstrate how this affects the propagation models in line-of-sight (LoS) scenarios and enables finite-depth beamforming. In particular, it becomes possible to simultaneously serve users that a…
