Millimetre-Wave Backhaul for 5G Networks: Challenges and Solutions.
The trend for dense deployment in future 5G mobile communication networks makes current wired backhaul infeasible owing to the high cost. Millimetre-wave (mm-wave) communication, a promising technique with the capability of providing a multi-gigabit transmission rate, offers a flexible and cost-effective candidate for 5G backhauling. By exploiting highly directional antennas, it becomes practical to cope with explosive traffic demands and to deal with interference problems. Several advancements in physical layer technology, such as hybrid beamforming and full duplexing, bring new challenges and opportunities for mm-wave backhaul. This article introduces a design framework for 5G mm-wave backhaul, including routing, spatial reuse scheduling and physical layer techniques. The associated optimization model, open problems and potential solutions are discussed to fully exploit the throughput gain of the backhaul network. Extensive simulations are conducted to verify the potential benefits of the proposed method for the 5G mm-wave backhaul design.
State Key Laboratory on Microwave and Digital Communications, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNLIST), Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. fengw12@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn.
Wei
W
Feng
State Key Laboratory on Microwave and Digital Communications, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNLIST), Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. liyong07@tsinghua.edu.cn.
Yong
Y
Li
State Key Laboratory on Microwave and Digital Communications, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNLIST), Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. jindp@tsinghua.edu.cn.
Depeng
D
Jin
State Key Laboratory on Microwave and Digital Communications, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNLIST), Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. lisu@tsinghua.edu.cn.
Li
L
Su
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. sqc@ecs.soton.ac.uk.|King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia. sqc@ecs.soton.ac.uk.
Sheng
S
Chen
5G; full duplexing; hybrid beamforming; millimetre-wave backhaul; multi-hop routing; scheduling