Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computing and Wireless Communication Systems, ICCWCS 2019, April 24-25, 2019, Faculty of Sciences, Ibn Tofaïl University -Kénitra- Morocco

Research Article

Hybrid Beamforming for Relay-Aided mmWave Backhaul links

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/eai.24-4-2019.2284218,
        author={Mostafa  Hefnawi and Jamal  Zbitou and Mohamed  Aboulfatah and Hassan  Abdelmounim},
        title={Hybrid Beamforming for Relay-Aided mmWave Backhaul links},
        proceedings={Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computing and Wireless Communication Systems, ICCWCS 2019, April 24-25, 2019, Faculty of Sciences, Ibn Tofa\~{n}l University -K\^{e}nitra- Morocco},
        publisher={EAI},
        proceedings_a={ICCWCS},
        year={2019},
        month={5},
        keywords={hybrid beamforming hetnets relays massive mimo mmwaves},
        doi={10.4108/eai.24-4-2019.2284218}
    }
    
  • Mostafa Hefnawi
    Jamal Zbitou
    Mohamed Aboulfatah
    Hassan Abdelmounim
    Year: 2019
    Hybrid Beamforming for Relay-Aided mmWave Backhaul links
    ICCWCS
    EAI
    DOI: 10.4108/eai.24-4-2019.2284218
Mostafa Hefnawi1,*, Jamal Zbitou2, Mohamed Aboulfatah2, Hassan Abdelmounim2
  • 1: RMC CANADA
  • 2: LMEET
*Contact email: hefnawi@rmc.ca

Abstract

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) technologies have emerged as a promising solution to enhance the backhaul wireless link in 5G Heterogeneous networks (HetNets). These mmWave backhaul links, however, are very susceptible to a significant path loss due to the blockage of the line-ofsight and massive antenna arrays may not be sufficient to alleviate such losses. To this end, relays are usually deployed to provide alternative routes that help boost links with high path loss. In this paper, therefore, we consider using relay base stations (RBS) in mmWave backhaul links between small cell base stations (SBS) and a macro-cell base station (MBS). It is assumed that the SBSs, the RBSs, and the MBS are all equipped with massive antenna arrays employing hybrid analog and digital beamforming. The analog beamformers are based on the selection of fixed multi-beams using a constrained eigenbeamforming scheme while the digital beamformers are based on the maximum ratio transmission and maximum ratio combining (MRT/MRC) schemes that maximize the transmit and receive SINRs of the effective channels created by the actual channel and the analog beamformer. The performance evaluation in terms of the beampatterns and the ergodic channel capacity shows that the proposed HBF scheme achieves near-optimal performance with only 4 RF chains and requires considerably less computational complexity