Antenna

Multi–Antenna Techniques for
Millimetre–Wave Radios
by
André Pollok
Dipl.–Ing.
Thesis submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
in
Telecommunications
February 2010
Manuscript submitted for examination 11 September 2009; revised 12 February 2010.
Copyright © 2009 André Pollok
All Rights Reserved
iii
Contents
Contents iii
List of Figures vi
List of Tables viii
List of Acronyms ix
List of Symbols xi
Summary xvi
List of Publications xviii
Declaration xix
Acknowledgements xx
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Millimetre–Wave Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Propagation Characteristics and Antenna Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 GLIMMR Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.3 Standardisation Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Multi–Antenna Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.1 Spatial Multiplexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2.2 Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Contribution and Outline of Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 MIMO Communications 11
2.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.1 Frequency–Flat Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.2 Frequency–Selective Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 Spatial Multiplexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.1 Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.2 Polarisation Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3 MIMO Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
iv Contents
2.3.1 Subcarrier–Wise Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.3.2 Symbol–Wise Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3 MIMO Channel Model for 60 GHz Communications 29

3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2 Physical Channel Model: 3D Ray–Tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.1 Mirror Image Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2.2 Propagation and Reflections of Electromagnetic Waves . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.3 Extrapolation of Ray–Tracing Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3 Analytical Channel Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.4 Model Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.5 OFDM Channel Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.5.1 Filter Design and Effects of Random Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.6 Partitioned Office Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.7 Numerical Results for SISO Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.7.1 Typical Behaviour of 60 GHz Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.7.2 Spatial Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.8 Kronecker Correlation Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4 Spatial Multiplexing 51
4.1 Spatially Separated Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.2 Polarisation Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.3 LoS–Only Channel Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.4 Numerical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5 Symbol–Wise Beamforming 63
5.1 Optimality of Symbol–Wise Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.2 Maximisation of the Mutual Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.2.1 Optimisation of the Antenna Weight Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.3 Maximisation of the SINR before OFDM Demodulation . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.4 Numerical Optimisation of Symbol–Wise BF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.4.1 Iterative Algorithm: maxSINRsym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.4.2 Iterative Algorithm: maxMIsym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.4.3 Convergence Behaviour of Proposed Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.5 Numerical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.5.1 Influence of Spatial Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.5.2 Influence of Frequency–Selectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.5.3 Influence of Co–Channel Interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
6 Beamforming Extensions 89
6.1 Subcarrier–Group–Wise Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.1.1 Application to OFDMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Contents v
6.1.2 Numerical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

6.2 Asymmetric Beamforming Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.2.1 Symbol–Wise Transmit and Subcarrier–Wise Receive BF . . . . . . . 93
6.2.2 Subcarrier–Wise Transmit and Symbol–Wise Receive BF . . . . . . . 95
6.2.3 Numerical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
7 Conclusions 99
7.1 Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
A Proofs and Derivations 103

A.1 Proof of Theorem 2.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
A.2 Kronecker Correlation Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
A.3 Second Condition for Maximum Mutual Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
A.4 Proof of Theorem 5.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
A.5 Non–Concavity of SINRpre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
A.6 Conditions for Maximum SINRpre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
A.7 Re–expressing SINRpre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
B Complex Differentiation and Convexity/Concavity 111

B.1 Complex Differentiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
B.2 Complex Hessian with respect to a Stacked Variable Vector . . . . . . . . . . 113
B.3 Convexity and Concavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Bibliography 117
vi
List of Figures
2.1 OFDM-based MIMO communications system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.2 Subcarrier-wise BF for OFDM systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3 Symbol-wise BF for OFDM systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.1 Physical and analytical channel model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3.2 Mirror Image Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3 Triangular filtering and effect of sampling offsets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4 Effect of random sampling offsets on the capacity of typical 60 GHz SISO-
OFDM channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.5 Partitioned office scenario: geometrical setup for the ray-tracing simulation. 39
3.6 Typical 60 GHz channel impulse responses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.7 Fading maps for LoS and NLoS channels on the centre subcarrier and their
approximation by the dominant MPCs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.8 Typical 60 GHz channel impulse responses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.9 Grid of receiver positions with range and cross-range directions. . . . . . . . . 44
3.10 Fading map and spatial correlation function for 60 GHz LoS channel. . . . . . 45
3.11 Spatial correlation function for 60 GHz channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.1 Distribution of the mutual information for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 20λc
antenna spacing at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2 Histogram of eigenvalue ratio λn,2 /λn,1 for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 20λc
antenna spacing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3 Outage capacity for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 20λc antenna spacing. . . 54
4.4 Histogram of eigenvalue ratio λn,2 /λn,1 for 2×2 PartOff B channels with dif-
ferent antenna spacings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.5 Distribution of the mutual information for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 1λc
and 20λc antenna spacing at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.6 Capacity of the LoS-only model for different antenna array configurations. . . 58
4.7 Outage capacity and histograms of eigenvalue ratio λn,2 /λn,1 for 2×2 PartOff
A channels with different antenna array configurations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
List of Figures vii
4.8 Distribution of the mutual information for 2×2 PartOff A channels and differ-
ent antenna array configurations at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB. . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.9 Outage capacity for 2×2 PartOff A single-desk channels and different antenna
array configurations at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.1 Mutual information I for antenna weight vectors restricted to randomly gen-
erated lines and a selected 3×3 PartOff B channel realisation. . . . . . . . . . 67
5.2 Convergence behaviour of maxSINRsym for 60 GHz channels (PartOff B). . . 75
5.3 Number of complex multiplications for maxSINRsym, maxMIsym and maxSINRsc
versus array size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.4 Lower and upper bounds on the mutual information CCDFs for maxSINRsym
and maxMIsym for 60 GHz PartOff B channels for different array sizes. . . . 79
5.5 CCDFs of the mutual information for 60 GHz PartOff B channels and different
array sizes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.6 Distribution of the mutual information for 3×3 two-tap Kronecker channels
and different levels of spatial correlation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.7 Outage capacity vs. spatial correlation for 3×3 Kron B channels. . . . . . . . 82
5.8 Optimal BF vector correlation vs. subcarrier distance for 3×3 Kron B channels
and different levels of spatial correlation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.9 Outage capacity vs. delay spread for spatially uncorrelated 3×3 Kron D channels. 83
5.10 Optimal BF vector correlation vs. subcarrier distance for spatially uncorrelated
3×3 Kron D channels for different delay spreads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.11 Outage capacity vs. SIR for 3×3 two-tap equal-gain Rayleigh channels . . . . 85
5.12 Outage capacity vs. SIR for 60 GHz PartOff B channels and different array sizes. 86
6.1 Subcarrier-group-wise BF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
6.2 OFDMA-based BF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
6.3 Mutual information CCDFs for subcarrier-group-wise BF for spatially uncor-
related 3×3 Kron D channels with exponential PDP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.4 Mutual information CCDFs for OFDMA-based and subcarrier-group-wise BF
for spatially uncorrelated 3×3 Kron D channels with exponential PDP. . . . . 93
6.5 Mutual information CCDFs for asymmetric BF systems for 3×3 Kronecker
channels with exponential PDP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
viii
List of Tables
3.1 Object and material properties of the partitioned office. . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

3.2 Transmission scenarios within PartOff A and PartOff B. . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3 Parameters of the Kronecker correlation channel model. . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 Channel models with Kronecker correlation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
5.1 Pseudo-code for maxSINRsym. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

5.2 Pseudo-code for the (modified) power method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.3 Pseudo-code for maxMIsym. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.4 Convergence statistics for PartOff B channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.5 Mean number of iterations until convergence for maxSINRsym and maxMIsym
for 3×3 PartOff B channels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.6 Number of complex multiplications and additions for maxSINRsym and
maxMIsym. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
ix
List of Acronyms
Acronym Description Page

3D 3-dimensional 30
i.i.d. Independent and identically distributed 6
ADC Analogue-to-digital converter 27
AWGN Additive white Gaussian noise 12
BF Beamforming 5
CCDF Complementary cumulative distribution function 51
CIR Channel impulse response 12
CP Cyclic prefix 13
DAC Digital-to-analogue converter 27
DFT Discrete Fourier transform 14
DoA Direction of arrival 29
DoD Direction of departure 29
E-field Electrical field 32
EP Equal power 17
EVD Eigenvalue decomposition 24
FFT Fast Fourier transform 24
FIR Finite impulse response 20
Gbps Gigabits per second 1
GLIMMR Gigabit Low-Cost Integrated Millimetre-Wave Radio 2
GTC GLIMMR test chip 2
HD High definition 3
IDFT Inverse discrete Fourier Transform 13
ISI Inter-symbol interference 12
ITR Institute for Telecommunications Research 3
LDPC Low-density parity check 3
LoS Line-of-sight 2
MAC Medium access control layer 4
maxMI-scTx-symRx Asymmetric BF algorithm: maximisation of the mutual 95
information for subcarrier-wise transmit and symbol-wise
receive BF
maxMI-symTx-scRx Asymmetric BF algorithm: maximisation of the mutual 95
information for symbol-wise transmit and subcarrier-wise
receive BF
maxMIsym Symbol-wise BF algorithm: iterative maximisation of the 73
mutual information via the MPM (interference-unaware)
x List of Acronyms
Acronym Description Page

maxSINRsc Subcarrier-wise BF: maximisation of SINRep,n on all sub- 23
carriers
maxSINRsym Symbol-wise BF algorithm: iterative maximisation of 70
SINRpre (interference-aware)
maxSNRsym Symbol-wise BF algorithm: iterative maximisation of the 71
SNR averaged across all subcarriers (interference-unaware)
MIMO Multiple-input multiple-output 5
MISO Multiple-input single-output 15
mm-Wave Millimetre-Wave 1
MPC Multipath component 2
MPM Modified power method 73
MSE Mean squared error 7
NLoS Non-line-of-sight 2
OFDM Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing 3
OFDMA Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access 91
PDP Power delay profile 47
PHY Physical Layer 4
PM Power method 71
RF Radio frequency 1
RMS Root mean square 7
SIMO Single-input multiple-output 15
SINR Signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio 9
SISO Single-input single-output 6
SNR Signal-to-noise ratio 12
SVD Singular value decomposition 16
TG3c IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group 3c 4
TGad IEEE 802.11 Task Group ad 3
TGn IEEE 802.11 Task Group n 3
VHT Very high throughput 4
WF Waterfilling 17
WLAN Wireless local area network 1
WPAN Wireless personal area network 1
XPD Cross-polarisation discrimination 19
ZOH Zero-order hold 36
xi
List of Symbols
Symbol Description Page

|·| Absolute value or set cardinality 21
k·k Euclidean norm 32
⊗ Kronecker product 47
Ex {·} Expected value with respect to x 11
hist(x) Histogram of random variable x (normalised to unit area) 52
loga (·) Logarithm with respect to base a; natural logarithm if base omitted 17
min{x, y} Minimum of the two real-valued scalars x and y 6
(x)+ Maximum of zero and the real-valued scalar x, i.e. max {0, x} 17
∂
∂x Partial derivative with respect to x 66
∇x Gradient operator with respect to x 65
O(·) Order notation, e.g. the order of the computational complexity 24
Pr(·)
Probability 16
X i,j Element in row i and column j of matrix X 47
XT Transpose of matrix X 34
X† Hermitian of matrix X 11
X −1 Inverse of matrix X 22
X 1/2 Matrix square root with X = X 1/2 X †/2 47
det(X) Determinant of matrix X 17
tr(X) Trace of matrix X 12
rank(X) Rank of matrix X 17
vec(X) Stacking of the columns of a (p×q) matrix X into a (pq×1) vector 47
T
1 All-one vector, i.e. 1 = 1 · · · 1 66
Ai,j,p Polarimetric coupling matrix of the pth MPC between transmit an- 31
tenna j and receive antenna i
aϕϑ
i,j,p Coupling coefficient between ϕ and ϑ polarisation of the pth MPC 31
between transmit antenna j and receive antenna i
ai,j,p Complex path gain of the pth MPC between the j th transmit and 35
the ith receive antenna
β Relative free-space path loss and propagation phase term 33
Cp×q Complex number field of dimension p×q 11
Cep Channel capacity for an equal power allocation 17
Cout,q Outage capacity for outage probability q 16
Cwf Channel capacity for optimal WF power allocation 18
CN (M , R) Multivariate complex Gaussian distribution with mean matrix M 47
and correlation matrix R
xii List of Symbols

δnn0 Dirac delta 15
d Distance or path length 33
d0 Reference distance 36
drx Inter-element spacing of uniform linear receive array 47
dLoS LoS distance from transmitter to receiver 33
dtx Inter-element spacing of uniform linear transmit array 47
∆n Subcarrier distance 82
η Waterlevel of WF algorithm 17
ε Timing offset between transmitter and receiver sampling clocks 35
E E-field intensity vector 32
Eϕ E-field with linear polarisation in ϕ direction 32
eϕ Basis vector in ϕ direction 32
Eϕϕ ϕ-polarised E-field intensity at receiver caused by E ϕ 33
Eϕϑ ϑ-polarised E-field intensity at receiver caused by E ϕ 33
Eϑ E-field with linear polarisation in ϑ direction 32
eϑ Basis vector in ϑ direction 32
Eϑϕ ϕ-polarised E-field intensity at receiver caused by E ϑ 33
Eϑϑ ϑ-polarised E-field intensity at receiver caused by E ϑ 33
Ei E-field intensity vector incident at reflection point 33
Ei,k Parallel component of E i (with respect to plane of incidence) 33
ei,k Basis vector in direction of Ei,k 33
Ei,⊥ Perpendicular component of E i (with respect to plane of incidence) 33
ei,⊥ Basis vector in direction of Ei,⊥ 33
Er E-field intensity vector of reflected wave 33
er,k Basis vector in direction of E r 33
f (τ ) Combined impulse response of transmit pulse shaping and the anti- 34
alias filter at the receiver
Gl Random matrix with i.i.d. CN (0, 1) entries (tap l of Kronecker 47
model)
g rx,i Complex antenna gain vector of receive antenna i 34
g tx,j Complex antenna gain vector of transmit antenna j 34
Grx,i,ϕ Complex antenna gain for ϕ polarisation of receive antenna i 34
Grx,i,ϑ Complex antenna gain for ϑ polarisation of receive antenna i 34
Gtx,j,ϕ Complex antenna gain for ϕ polarisation of transmit antenna j 34
Gtx,j,ϑ Complex antenna gain for ϑ polarisation of transmit
antenna j 34
hi,j,l (i, j)th entry of channel matrix of lth tap, i.e. H l i,j 36
hi,j (τ ) Continuous-time CIR between transmit antenna j and receive an- 34
tenna i
Hl Channel matrix of channel tap l 12
hint,l Channel vector from interferer to receiver on tap l 84
Hn Channel matrix on subcarrier n 15
Hint,n Channel from interferer to receiver on subcarrier n 84
I Mutual information 11
IM Identity matrix of size M 12
i Multi-purpose index; primarily used as receive antenna index 11
j Multi-purpose index; primarily used as transmit antenna index 11
√
j Imaginary unit, j = −1 13
k Discrete time index 11
Kσ Delay spread parameter (Kronecker model) 48
List of Symbols xiii

λc Carrier wavelength 33
λmax (X) Maximum eigenvalue of matrix X 23
λn,m mth non-zero eigenvalue of Hn H†n 19
L Number of channel taps 12
l Channel tap index 12
Lint Number of interference channel taps 84
LI Lagrangian of the mutual information 65
LSINRpre Lagrangian of SINRpre 108
µn,m Power allocation to eigenmode m on subcarrier n 19
µn Power allocation to subcarrier n 65
µ Column vector of all power allocations µn 65
m Eigenmode index 17
Mrx Number of receive antennas 6
Mtx Number of transmit antennas 6
Nq Subcarrier subset of q th subcarrier group or OFDMA user 89
ν Lagrange multiplier associated with the transmit power constraint 65
N Number of OFDM subcarriers 12
n Subcarrier index 13
Ngrp Number of subcarrier groups or OFDMA users 89
NPM Number of (M)PM iterations 72
Nq Number of subcarrier of the q th subcarrier group or OFDMA user 89
Ncp Length of cyclic prefix 13
Ω Spatial angle 32
Ωtx DoD (spatial angle) 31
Ωtx,i,j,p DoD (spatial angle) of the pth MPC between transmit antenna j and 31
receive antenna i
Ωrx DoA (spatial angle) 31
Ωrx,i,j,p DoA (spatial angle) of the pth MPC between transmit antenna j and 31
receive antenna i
Ps Average transmit power per symbol 12
Pi,j Number of MPCs between transmit antenna j and receive antenna i 31
ϕ Angle in azimuth direction 31
ϕDoD,l Mean DoD (tap l of Kronecker model) 47
ϕDoA,l Mean DoA (tap l of Kronecker model) 47
ψ Phase shift for phased-array transmit BF 85
Q Covariance matrix of the symbol vector s 11
q Multi-purpose index, e.g. iteration index 70
q Outage probability 16
Qn Covariance matrix of S n 13
Rrx,l Receive correlation matrix of channel tap l (Kronecker model) 47
Rint,rx,l Receive correlation matrix on tap l of interference channel (Kro- 84
necker model)
Rtx,l Transmit correlation matrix of channel tap l (Kronecker model) 47
RW n Covariance matrix of interference-plus-noise vector W n 14
Rw Covariance matrix of interference-plus-noise vector w 11
Rl Correlation matrix of channel tap l (Kronecker model) 47
Rn,n0 Channel correlation matrix between subcarriers n and n0 (Kronecker 48
model)
rrx,i Location of the ith receive antenna element 31
xiv List of Symbols

rtx,j Location of the j th transmit antenna element 31
R⊥ Reflection coefficient for Ei,⊥ 33
Rk Reflection coefficient for Ei,k 33
ρrx,l Receive correlation parameter (tap l of Kronecker model) 47
ρtx,l Transmit correlation parameter (tap l of Kronecker model) 47
ρu Correlation of the subcarrier-wise receive BF vectors un across sub- 82
carriers
ρv Correlation of the subcarrier-wise transmit BF vectors v n across sub- 82
carriers
ρ (d) Spatial correlation coefficient at distance d 44
ρ (d) Averaged spatial correlation coefficient at distance d 44
σw2 Average noise power per receive antenna 12
s[k] Symbol vector transmitted at time k 11
s0 [k] Scalar symbol transmitted at time k (BF case) 26
Sn Symbol vector on subcarrier n 13
Sn0 Scalar symbol transmitted on subcarrier n (BF case) 21
2
σint Variance of interfering symbols Xn 84
σl2 Average power delay profile (tap l of Kronecker model) 47
SINRep,n Average received SINR of subcarrier n for an equal power allocation 22
SINRn Average received SINR of subcarrier n 22
SINRpre Average received SINR previous to OFDM demodulation 68
SIR 2
Average signal-to-interference ratio Ps /σint 84
SNR Average signal-to-noise ratio Ps /σw 2 12
SNR(d0 ) Link budget at reference distance d0 36
τ Propagation delay 31
τrms RMS delay spread 43
τi,j,p Propagation delay of the pth MPC between transmit antenna j and 31
receive antenna i
ϑ Angle in elevation direction 31
Ts Duration of time-domain symbols s 35
U(a, b) Uniform distribution in the interval [a, b] 48
u Symbol-wise receive BF vector 25
un Subcarrier-wise receive BF vector on subcarrier n 21
ugrp,q Symbol-wise receive BF vector of q th subcarrier group or OFDMA 89
user
v Symbol-wise transmit BF vector 25
vn Subcarrier-wise transmit BF vector on subcarrier n 21
v grp,q Symbol-wise transmit BF vector of q th subcarrier group or OFDMA 89
user
w[k] Interference-plus-noise vector at time k 11
Wn Interference-plus-noise vector on subcarrier n 14
x̂ Value of variable x at optimal/stationary point 22
T
Stacked variable vector, e.g. x = uT v T µT

x 65
Xn Interfering symbol on subcarrier n 84
ξ Phase shift for phased-array receive BF 85
y[k] Symbol vector received at time k 11
y 0 [k] Scalar symbol received at time k (BF case) 26
Yn Symbol vector received on subcarrier n 14
Yn0 Scalar symbol received on subcarrier n (BF case) 21
List of Symbols xv

ζ Lagrange multiplier associated with the constraint on the transmit 65
antenna weight vector
Zn Gaussian noise vector 84
xvi
Summary
Triggered by the release of up to 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum around 60 GHz, millime-

tre-wave (mm-wave) communications have become one of the hot topics of wireless indoor
communications. To some degree, the potential of mm-wave radios is hampered by channel
characteristics that impose tremendous challenges for system design and operation. Excep-
tionally high propagation losses limit transmissions to a few metres and render non-line-of-
sight (NLoS) operation difficult. Due to these adverse conditions, adaptive multi-antenna
solutions are foreseen as one of the enabling technologies. While phased-array beamforming
(BF) is commonly considered a well-suited approach, a comprehensive study of the ultimate
capabilities of antenna-array-based techniques in the context of mm-wave communications is
not available to date. This thesis aims to remedy this situation, focussing on spatial multi-
plexing and BF. Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is assumed to cope with
the frequency-selective nature of 60 GHz multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels.
As a first step, the multiplexing gain is assessed using the channel capacity – the ultimate
upper bound on the mutual information. In LoS-dominated situations, spatial multiplexing
in conjunction with polarisation diversity shows good performance over short links. However,
results also show that in general, mm-wave channels offer only negligible multiplexing gain,
which is linked to exceptionally high levels of spatial correlation.
Whilst adverse for spatial multiplexing, the channel conditions are in favour of BF: results
show the potential of joint transmit and receive BF to almost achieve capacity, highlighting
near-optimality. The MIMO-OFDM BF scheme that maximises the mutual information is
known from the literature. Although this solution provides a mutual information bound
that is tighter than the channel capacity, this bound is generally still loose when applied
to BF schemes that operate in the time domain (e.g. phased-array BF). Furthermore, due
to subcarrier-wise operation, the computational requirements of the optimal BF scheme are
prohibitive for practical 60 GHz transceivers, where low implementation complexity and pro-
cessing delay are of utmost importance.
OFDM-symbol-wise BF has been proposed as a low-complexity BF scheme. In this thesis,
a mutual information bound is derived in the framework of symbol-wise BF, which also covers
phased-array BF as a special case. Whilst maximising the mutual information analytically
is intractable, a new iterative algorithm is proposed that numerically computes the desired
bound. Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations confirm convergence to the global maximum or
a solution in its close vicinity. A second novel algorithm that has the ability to mitigate co-
channel interference is found by maximising the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR).
Despite different optimisation criteria, both algorithms yield virtually identical solutions.
The proposed algorithms not only provide benchmarks for other BF schemes, but also viable
options for practical 60 GHz radios. Its considerably lower complexity renders the SINR-based
algorithm particularly attractive. Furthermore, the mutual-information-based algorithm is
extended to hybrid symbol/subcarrier-wise BF systems.
Summary xvii
Computer simulations demonstrate the performance degradation of symbol-wise BF rel-

ative to the subcarrier-wise approach to be small on typical 60 GHz channels. Simulation
results also show that this loss becomes smaller as spatial correlation increases or frequency
selectivity decreases.
xviii
List of Publications
[1] A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and N. Letzepis, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for MIMO-

OFDM transceivers in the presence of Co-Channel interference and spatial correlation,”
IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 5755–5760, Dec. 2009.
[2] A. Pollok, N. Letzepis, and W. G. Cowley, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for Co-Channel

interference reduction in MIMO-OFDM systems,” in Proc. IEEE Global Commun.
Conf. (Globecom), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Nov. 2009.
[3] W. G. Cowley, A. Pollok, and N. Letzepis, “Filter optimisation and timing drift
in High-Rate OFDM systems,” in Proc. Australian Commun. Theory Workshop
(AusCTW), Sydney, Australia, Feb. 2009, pp. 90–93.
[4] N. Letzepis, A. Pollok, and W. G. Cowley, “Mutual information distribution of spa-

tially correlated MIMO-OFDM systems in the low signal-to-noise ratio regime,” in Proc.
Australian Commun. Theory Workshop (AusCTW), Sydney, Australia, Feb. 2009, pp.
83–89.
[5] A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and I. D. Holland, “Multiple-input multiple-output options

for 60 GHz line-of-sight channels,” in Proc. Australian Commun. Theory Workshop
(AusCTW), Christchurch, New Zealand, Jan. 2008, pp. 101–106.
[6] I. D. Holland, A. Pollok, and W. G. Cowley, “Design and simulation of NLOS high
data rate mm-wave WLANs,” in Proc. NEWCOM-ACoRN Joint Workshop, Vienna,
Austria, Sep. 2006.
xix
Declaration
I declare that:
• this thesis presents work carried out by myself and does not incorporate without ac-
knowledgment any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any uni-
versity;
• to the best of my knowledge it does not contain any materials previously published
or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text; and all
substantive contributions by others to the work presented, including jointly authored
publications, is clearly acknowledged.
Digitally signed by Andre Pollok

Date: 2010.07.07 11:38:13 +09'30'
André Pollok
12 February 2010
xx
Acknowledgements
The research for this thesis was undertaken during my time as Ph.D. student at the Institute
for Telecommunications Research (ITR) at the University of South Australia. Without the
involvement and generous support of numerous people, my studies and thesis would not have
been possible.
First and foremost, I wish to express my gratitude to my principal supervisor Prof. Bill
Cowley for his valuable feedback, guidance, encouragement and the many inspiring discus-
sions, both in and out of office – sometimes even when riding home after work. Many thanks
also for your hospitality, numerous delicious home-cooked meals and the great canoeing ex-
perience in the Riverlands.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my associate supervisors Dr. Ian Holland and Dr.
Nick Letzepis for the numerous stimulating discussions, clever suggestions and friendship
throughout my studies. Special thanks to Ian for encouraging me to take up a Ph.D. position
at ITR.
I am grateful for the financial support of the GLIMMR project and the Institute for
Telecommunications Research. Also much appreciated is the travel funding provided by
ACoRN that made it possible for me to attend conferences and visit other research groups
in Australia, as well as Europe.
Furthermore, I would like to thank Associate Prof. Regina Burachik for several insightful
discussions and her patience with a convex-optimisation “newbie”.
Liebe Mama, lieber Papa, liebe Simone, ich möchte euch von ganzem Herzen für eure
langjährige, liebevolle und unerschöpfliche Unterstützung während meines Studiums bedanken.
Trotz der nicht unerheblichen geografischen Entfernung habe ich mich immer ganz nah bei
euch gefühlt. Euer Optimismus hat mich immer sehr ermutigt.
Finally, I thank Lou, my beautiful wife, who in the darkest of hours never ceased to be op-
timistic. Your loving support, prayers and endless patience have always been an unparalleled
encouragement and powerful source of energy to me.
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Millimetre–Wave Communications
Due to a continually growing interest in wireless communication services, frequency spectrum

has become a scarce and precious resource. Most current wireless services use bands in the
frequency range below 10 GHz, giving rise to increasing congestion. The carrier frequencies
of future wireless systems will have to be moved further towards the upper end of the spec-
trum. A clear indicator for this trend was the global release of large amounts of bandwidth
in the 60 GHz millimetre-wave (mm-wave) band for unlicensed use. A summary of the world-
wide regulations along with the allocated spectra can be found in [1]. Increasing amounts
of multimedia content as one of the driving forces behind recent developments in wireless
communications create an ever-growing demand for higher data rates. The availability of up
to 7 GHz of spectrum makes the 60 GHz band an almost ideal candidate for next-generation
wireless services with potential data rates of multiple Gigabits per second (Gbps).
Historically, 60 GHz radio frequency (RF) circuitry was implemented using compound
semiconductor technologies such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) [2]. However, the high cost
of this technology rule out its use for consumer electronics [2, 3]. With recent advances in
semiconductor technology, significantly cheaper 60 GHz RF chips in silicon germanium (SiGe)
or complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology have come into reach [4].
Coupled with the fact that high frequencies lead to small RF components and thus, also
reduce the form factor of RF chips [2], these technologies have the potential to implement
inexpensive low-power mm-wave radios.
On the downside, the use of such high frequencies and data rates imposes unprecedented
challenges for implementation and operation of a wireless radio. For example, operating
a wireless multi-Gbps link places strict requirements on processing delay and transceiver
complexity. However, to a large degree, challenges stem from the physical properties of
signal propagation in the mm-wave band.
1.1.1 Propagation Characteristics and Antenna Effect
While the propagation effects at lower frequencies such as those used by existing wireless
local/personal area networks (WLAN/WPAN) are generally well understood, researchers
have pointed out a lack of 60 GHz channel measurements and models [1, 5, 6]. It has been
noted that propagation characteristics are quite different in the 60 GHz band. Due to its
squared dependency on the carrier frequency, the free-space path loss [7, p.28] is substantially
2 Chapter 1. Introduction
higher at 60 GHz than, say, in the 2.4 or 5 GHz WLAN bands [1]. Additionally, the signal
attenuation caused by oxygen absorption and reflections from, or penetration through objects,
has been reported to be substantially higher (see [8, 9, 1, 4] and references therein). With
the exception of fixed-link transmissions, these specific wave propagation properties render
terrestrial 60 GHz communications primarily suitable for short-range applications [10, 9, 4].
Given that multipath components (MPC) are highly attenuated (particularly those reaching
the receiver via indirect propagation paths), 60 GHz channels are typically characterised by
sparse multipath. Furthermore, the diffraction of mm-waves around edges is only weak [9],
resulting in sharp shadowing zones. Weak diffraction combined with high attenuation of
indirect MPCs implies a high sensitivity of 60 GHz communications to shadowing or line-of-
sight (LoS) obstruction [4,1]. While high-gain antennas may counteract the signal attenuation
to some degree, the effects of link obstruction become even more severe. For example, human
body blockage can lead to a dramatic drop of more than 20 dB in received signal power [11].
Therefore, adaptive antenna array solutions are generally considered more desirable (e.g.
see [5, 1, 4]) as they can offer high antenna gain coupled with the flexibility of steerable
beams. Small form factors of 60 GHz RF components and antenna dimensions on the order
of millimetres [12] open up the possibility to integrate multiple 60 GHz antennas even into
small devices.
Although the high propagation losses at 60 GHz render reliable communications over non-
LoS (NLoS) channels difficult, some of the opportunities for the mm-wave technology stem
exactly from this strong attenuation. The significant losses that a 60 GHz signal encounters
when penetrating walls, floor, or ceiling effectively reduce the operating range to the size of
one room and keep interference from co-existing terminals that operate in (say) the adjacent
room at a low level. As a result, the spectrum can be reused within close proximity [13,
14]. Moreover, protection against eavesdropping – a key issue in wireless communications
– benefits from the short transmission ranges as the signal is more or less confined to the
environment it is intended for.
It should also be mentioned that due to the sparse and ray-like propagation, ray-tracing
is commonly considered a well-suited approach for 60 GHz channel modelling (e.g. see [15,16,
17, 18, 19, 20, 21]).
1.1.2 GLIMMR Project
In 2005, three Australian universities have joined forces with NHEW R&D Pty Ltd in a
Linkage Grant of the Australian Research Council (ARC), aiming to address the lack of
mm-wave solutions able to meet consumer market requirements such as low cost and power
consumption. This joint effort was dubbed the GLIMMR project (Gigabit Low-Cost Inte-
grated Millimetre-Wave Radio) [22]. The research for this thesis was carried out as part of
the GLIMMR project. The objective of the GLIMMR project, which is supported by Ca-
dence Design Systems, Jazz Semiconductor, Peregrine Semiconductor, Intel Corporation, and
AWR, is to develop an inexpensive solution for short-range 60 GHz communications, capable
of data rates on the order of Gbps. To achieve the ambitious project goals, a SiGe-based
approach was chosen, targeting a complete system on chip, including RF front-end and an-
tenna(s). Since 2005, three GLIMMR test chips (GTC) have been designed at Macquarie
University and the University of Adelaide. As a proof of concept, the first test chip GTC1
primarily contained individual RF components to allow for design model validation, testing
and tuning. As a second step, complete transmit and receive chains, including on-chip bond-
wire antennas, were implemented on GTC2. After successfully testing its components, some
basic channel measurements were taken using this chip. In contrast to GTC2, a modularised
approach was adopted for GTC3: due to complete separation of the transmit and receive
1.1. Millimetre–Wave Communications 3
RF components on the chip, independent transmit and receive modules can be obtained by
means of subdicing. A multiple of these modules can then be connected to a controller chip.
At the time of writing, the fabrication of GTC3 has been completed and the performance of
this chip is currently being tested and evaluated.
In parallel to the development of the analogue GLIMMR components, digital baseband
and MAC design was tackled by a team of researchers at the Institute for Telecommunications
Research (ITR), based at the University of South Australia. As one of the first steps of
the system modelling process, a ray-tracing-based channel model was implemented at ITR.
Although the time dispersion of the channel was found to be relatively small (root mean
square delay spreads on the order of nanoseconds), this still implies a high degree of frequency
selectivity when considering data rates of 1 Gbps or more. Therefore, a combination of
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and adaptive modulation and coding,
using a number of different signal constellations and a short low-density parity check (LDPC)
code, was adopted. Furthermore, issues such as analogue receive filtering, quantisation,
receiver synchronisation, phase noise, and device nonlinearity have been addressed at ITR.
More detailed information about the GLIMMR project can be found on the website [22]
and in the project-related publications [23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 3, 12, 28, 29].
1.1.3 Standardisation Efforts
As one of the hot topics of wireless communications, mm-wave communications have re-
ceived an enormous attention over the last few years. The opening of large amounts of
unlicensed spectrum around 60 GHz has not only generated tremendous interest among re-
searchers around the world, but has also triggered several standardisation efforts. Most of
these efforts are fairly recent. When the GLIMMR project started in 2005 (see Section 1.1.2),
only the IEEE 802.15.3c working group had been formed and was still in a very early stage of
the standardisation process. While some of the 60 GHz-based standards are still in the mak-
ing, WirelessHD and ECMA-387 have been recently finalised and the first products based
on these specifications are now hitting the consumer market. The following sections give
an overview of the major standardisation activities related to high-rate transmission and
communications in the 60 GHz band.
ECMA–387
Ecma International, a non-profit industry association that develops standards in the areas
of communications technology and consumer electronics, published their 60 GHz standard
ECMA-387 in December 2008. The specification is publicly available and can be downloaded
at [30]. Companies and research institutes who have jointly developed this standard include
the Georgia Electronic Design Centre (GEDC) at Georgia Tech, ETRI and Philips. ECMA-
387 targets multi-Gbps WPAN applications (e.g. wireless docking station) and the wireless
transport of multimedia content such as high-definition (HD) audio and video. In order to
support data rates of up to 6.4 Gbps over 10 m ranges in LoS/NLoS environments, adaptive
high-gain antenna arrays are used. According to a press release [31], the multi-Gbps opera-
tion of a standard-compliant communications link has been demonstrated using a single-chip
60 GHz CMOS radio with embedded antenna array, developed at GEDC.
IEEE 802.11ad
While the IEEE 802.11 Task Group n (TGn) is still in the final stages of approving their
standard (draft standard 8.0 was approved in March 2009) [32], Task Group ad (TGad) [33]
is already developing the successor of the WLAN standard 802.11n. Aiming at very high
throughput (VHT), the next-generation standard IEEE 802.11ad amends the existing 802.11
specifications of physical layer (PHY) and medium access control layer (MAC) to enable op-
eration in the 60 GHz band. TGad was formed only in January 2009 but draws upon previous
work of the VHT Study Group, which was first convened in May 2008. Furthermore, TGad
is working closely together with IEEE 802.15.3c (see below) to assure co-existence of both
60 GHz projects. Currently still at an early stage, TGad aims to finalise the standardisation
process by December 2012. Information about the current status of the project can be found
on the TGad website [33]. Documents submitted by various TGad members are also available
for download on this website.
Compliant devices are required to achieve a maximum throughput of at least 1 Gbps over
a range of at least 10 m. Faster links that enable the transmission of uncompressed HD
videos at rates of 3 Gbps are optional. While the TGad amendment to 802.11 maintains
the network architecture of the 802.11 system, devices will not be required to implement
operation in the legacy frequency bands 2.4 or 5 GHz. However, multi-band devices are
envisaged to support the seamless fall-back to the legacy bands when the 60 GHz link is not
operational. Furthermore, several channel models for multi-antenna 60 GHz WLAN systems
will be developed by TGad to support the standardisation [34].
IEEE 802.15.3c
The existing IEEE standard 802.15.3-2003 [35] defines PHY and MAC layer for WPANs
offering maximum data rates of 55 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band. The IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group
3c (TG3c) [36], formed in March 2005, aims to develop a 60 GHz-based alternative PHY for
802.15.3 WPANs. Compliant devices are required to support data rates of at least 1 Gbps,
targeting applications such as high-speed internet access or the wireless streaming of data
(e.g. video on demand). Furthermore, optional data rates of more than 2 Gbps are envisaged
to enable the wireless transmission of HD multimedia content or the replacement of wired
high-rate data links by wireless solutions. Based on numerous proposal submissions, TG3c
has developed a draft standard (current version: Draft 08). Proposals include PHY layer
options such as single carrier transmission (primarily envisaged for near-LoS conditions) or
OFDM, as well as smart antenna solutions to allow for NLoS operation [37,38]. Furthermore,
a 60 GHz channel model has been developed by TG3c [39] to support the standardisation.
Currently, TG3c is in the draft standard ballot phase and aims for approval of the final
standard in September 2009. Up-to-date information can be found on the TG3c website [36].
Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig)
Only recently, in May 2009, leading companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Dell and
Panasonic have joined together in the WiGig Alliance. With the goal to transmit HD multi-
media content wirelessly at rates of around 6 Gpbs using the 60 GHz band, WiGig is a direct
competitor of WirelessHD. However, WiGig is said to envisage more versatile data-transfer
applications such as WLAN and wireless docking/synchronisation. The consortium plans
to officially release the WiGig standard late in 2009. It has been speculated that WiGig
might have a strong influence on the upcoming IEEE 802.11 VHT standard as many WiGig
members are also involved with the WiFi Alliance, as well as the 802.11 group. Apart from
what is written in an Wikipedia entry [40] and in a number of news articles (e.g. see [41]),
technical details on WiGig were not publicly available at the time of writing.
1.2. Multi–Antenna Techniques 5
WirelessHD
With the finalisation of the specifications in January 2008, WirelessHD [42, 43] is currently
the most mature standard for mm-wave communications. The primary target application
is the wireless transmission of uncompressed HD video and multi-channel audio. One of
the founder members of the WirelessHD Consortium is SiBEAM, a US-based semiconductor
company that was founded in late 2004 by a team of researchers from the Berkeley Wireless
Research Center (BWRC) at the University of California. Furthermore, WirelessHD is backed
by several global players of the consumer electronics industry, including Broadcom, Intel,
Philips and Samsung. Optimised for wireless connectivity between audio/video home theatre
sources and HD displays, the first generation of WirelessHD supports data rates of up to
4 Gbps over distances of up to 10 m. Specifically, smart antenna technology is employed
to establish highly directional connections, enabling operation even under NLoS conditions.
Beam search and tracking enables WirelessHD devices to adapt to changes in the propagation
environment such as sudden human body blockage.
1.2 Multi–Antenna Techniques
Throughout the history of wireless communications, multiple-antenna techniques have re-

ceived a large amount of attention as they can offer extensive gains in throughput or reliabil-
ity over single-antenna systems. Due to the exceptionally high propagation, penetration and
reflection losses at 60 GHz, multi-antenna solutions are also foreseen as one of the enabling
technologies for mm-wave communications (see Section 1.1.1). A comprehensive overview
of traditional antenna array techniques, also referred to as smart antennas, can be found
in [44, 45]. These techniques aim to exploit array gain or spatial diversity gain. The term
array gain stems from the fact that an antenna array is characterised by a higher antenna
gain than each of its individual antenna elements. This gain, combined with the fact that
the shape of the antenna array pattern can be changed electronically by applying complex
weighting factors to the individual antenna elements, has motivated a whole range of adaptive
beamforming (BF) applications. For example, the received signal level or the signalling range
can be increased by focusing the array pattern in the direction of the terminal on the other
end of the communications link. In interference channels, BF can also be used to reduce the
influence of an interfering source by forming an array pattern null in its direction.
Spatial diversity gain refers to an increased link reliability relative to a single-antenna
system. Considering a multi-antenna receiver, the reliability increase is achieved by combining
the signals received at distinct antenna elements. Due to the spatial separation of the antenna
elements, the induced signals fade at different rates. Provided the antenna elements are
spaced sufficiently far apart, the random fading processes at each of the antenna locations
are uncorrelated and the probability that all received signals experience a deep fade at the
same time is small. A variety of different combining techniques have been proposed in the
literature, including equal gain combining, maximal ratio combining and selection combining
(see [46] and references therein). Even though the majority of studies involving adaptive
arrays has been devoted to receivers, the same principles apply to the transmit side, including
transmit BF and transmit diversity. It should also be noted that in the case of multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) communications, both the transmit and the receive antenna arrays
can be used to exploit array and spatial diversity gains.
About a decade ago, the ground-breaking work of Foschini and Gans [47] and Telatar
[48] sparked a revived interest in the area of multi-antenna techniques. They showed that
the channel capacity1 of a MIMO link can significantly exceed the capacity of a single-
input single-output (SISO) channel or that of a system with multiple antennas on one end
only. This boost in capacity was dubbed the multiplexing gain. Rather than relying on
increased transmit power or channel bandwidth, space is exploited as a new dimension for
communications. However, the multiplexing gain comes at the expense of additional hardware
and processing complexity. The corresponding transmission strategy is referred to as spatial
multiplexing, owing to the fact that multiple independent data streams – also referred to as
spatial streams – are transmitted using spatially separated antennas. Spatial multiplexing is
foreseen as one of the key techniques to enable data rates in excess of 1 Gbps [50]. Another
branch of MIMO communications that came to life around the same time is known under
the names transmit diversity2 or space-time coding. Whilst independent spatial streams are
used in spatial multiplexing for maximum transmission rates, space-time coding introduces
partial or full redundancy between the spatial streams with the aim to protect the data
transmission against errors. One of the most prominent examples is the Alamouti scheme [51].
References [52] and [50] are tutorial style articles, which give a detailed and instructive
overview of wireless MIMO communications.
The available amounts of array, spatial diversity and multiplexing gain strongly depend
on the propagation environment or, more specifically, on the channel conditions. One of
the main goals of this thesis is to assess the suitability of different multi-antenna techniques
for 60 GHz communications. The following discussions focus on spatial multiplexing and
beamforming.
1.2.1 Spatial Multiplexing
A MIMO channel offers a set of parallel data pipes, also known as spatial channel modes [50]
or eigenmodes [53]. Spatial multiplexing utilises these eigenmodes by transmitting multiple
independent data streams in parallel, giving rise to the celebrated capacity gain or multi-
plexing gain. It was shown in [47, 48] that ideally, the channel capacity grows proportionally
to min{Mtx , Mrx }, where Mtx and Mrx denote the number of transmit and receive antennas.
However, the available multiplexing gain strongly depends on the channel conditions. While
MIMO channels with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh entries such
as they were used in [47, 48] offer the highest multiplexing gains, spatial correlation between
different transmit and receive branches was shown to be a limiting factor [54, 53]. Spatial
correlation may originate from insufficient antenna spacing or small angular spread due to
a small number of local scatterers [55]. Furthermore, in LoS environments, the presence of
the direct link often increases the correlation and hence, reduces capacity [56]. An intuitive
explanation for this negative effect of spatial correlation can be found in [52]: in order to
be able to separate the spatial streams, each antenna element needs to “see” a sufficiently
different channel. If the MIMO channel matrix has full rank, the transmitted symbols can be
recovered at the receiver by solving the linear equation system associated with the channel
matrix. On the other hand, spatial correlation may lead to a rank-deficient channel ma-
trix [53]. Since in this case, not all transmitted symbols can be recovered without error, the
capacity is reduced.
The observation of non-rich multipath propagation in the 60 GHz band (see Section 1.1.1)
suggests a potentially high degree of spatial correlation. While such conditions can be ex-
pected to be rather unfavourable for spatial multiplexing, no studies providing a detailed and
1
The channel capacity is defined as the maximum data rate at which information can be transmitted over
a given channel with an arbitrarily small probability of error [49].
2
MIMO transmit diversity is not to be confused with smart antenna-based transmit diversity. In the smart
antenna case, identical symbol streams are launched from multiple transmit antennas.
1.2. Multi–Antenna Techniques 7
quantitative assessment are currently available. Adopting an information theoretic perspec-

tive, the suitability of spatial multiplexing for 60 GHz communications is assessed in terms
of the MIMO channel capacity in this thesis. Computer simulation results in Chapter 4
show that for the vast majority of 60 GHz channels, joint transmit and receive BF is able
to almost achieve the MIMO channel capacity, confirming the anticipated small multiplexing
gain. Justified by these findings, space-time coding will not be considered in this thesis as
this signalling technique also relies on the transmission of multiple spatial streams.
1.2.2 Beamforming
This section aims to give a brief overview of BF-related topics. For an excellent and more
complete discussion, the interested reader is referred to [44, 45] and the extensive literature
lists therein. As mentioned earlier, BF aims to focus the antenna array pattern in a certain
direction with the primary goal to enhance the received signal level of a desired source.
In its simplest form, phased-array BF, only the differential phase shift between adjacent
antenna elements is adjusted, while keeping the magnitude of the weights uniform [44]. The
main lobe of the array pattern is steered by changing the phase shift. Considerably higher
flexibility can be achieved by adjusting phase and magnitude of the individual antenna weights
independently. This BF technique is sometimes referred to as adaptive antennas [44]. In
addition to the beam pointing direction, the shape of the array pattern, including its side lobes
and the location of nulls, is adjusted. Choosing the location of pattern nulls is particularly
useful for suppression of one or more interfering sources.
Various algorithms for the weight optimisation exist, most of which impose a set of con-
straints on the steering directions [45, Section II.B–D]. The constraints commonly keep the
desired signal undistorted, while placing array pattern nulls in the direction of interferences.
A prominent example in this category is Capon BF, which minimises the mean output power
of the array subject to the steering constraints [57]. One drawback of most of these approaches
is that explicit knowledge of the direction of the desired source, and in some cases also of
the directions of unwanted sources, are required. In order to avoid explicit knowledge of the
desired source direction, the antenna weight adaptation of other schemes relies on a reference
signal. The optimal weights are obtained by minimising the mean squared error (MSE) be-
tween the reference signal and the array output [45, Section II.E]. Typically, pilot symbols
or the frame preamble that assist the synchronisation/estimation in practical receivers are
used as the reference signal. In practice, the optimal weights of the aforementioned schemes
are commonly computed and tracked with adaptive algorithms such as the least mean square
(LMS), root mean square (RMS) or recursive least square (RLS) algorithm [45, Section III].
A limitation of all the aforementioned schemes is that the optimisation is carried out over
the weights for one array only. In a MIMO setting, the weights for the transmit and receive
arrays need to be computed independently.
The primary focus of this thesis is to derive suboptimal BF strategies that sacrifice a small
loss in mutual information for a large reduction in computational complexity. Restricting the
considerations to OFDM-based MIMO systems, the mutual-information-maximising solution
is known when BF is carried out on a subcarrier-basis [58, 59]. However, this subcarrier-wise
BF approach is often not adequate for practical transceivers as the subcarrier-wise operation
has comparably high computational requirements. Specifically, the associated complexity is
prohibitive in mm-wave communications due to stringent requirements for low implemen-
tation cost, processing delay and power consumption. At the cost of some performance
degradation, symbol-wise BF can significantly reduce complexity by keeping the antenna
weights fixed across all subcarriers, or equivalently, for the entire OFDM symbol. Due to the
reduced degree of freedom compared to subcarrier-wise BF, the joint weight optimisation for
the transmit and receive antenna arrays is a non-trivial problem in the case of symbol-wise
BF. This thesis aims to develop low-complexity algorithms for the weight computation and to
find the upper performance limit of symbol-wise BF in MIMO-OFDM channels (of particular
interest is of course the performance over 60 GHz channels). Specifically, an upper bound on
the mutual information of symbol-wise BF is unknown to date.
1.3 Contribution and Outline of Thesis
To date, a comprehensive study of the ultimate capabilities of different multi-antenna tech-

niques in the context of mm-wave communications is not available. This thesis aims to remedy
this situation, focussing on the gains of spatial multiplexing and BF. Specifically in the area
of BF, this thesis introduces important upper bounds on the system performance that pro-
vide the ability to benchmark other BF solutions. The byproduct of the bound derivations is
the development of low-complexity BF algorithms that are well-suited for practical 60 GHz
transceivers.
Chapter 2 — MIMO Communications
In this chapter, a general system model for a MIMO-OFDM communications system, which
will be used throughout this thesis, is derived. The introduction of this system model is fol-
lowed by a review of spatial multiplexing and the capacity of MIMO channels. The channel
capacity represents the upper bound on the mutual information of a given channel realisation
and as such, will prove useful in assessing the performance of different multi-antenna tech-
niques. Specifically, joint transmit and receive BF is a highly promising approach due to the
sparse multipath structure of 60 GHz channels. Existing subcarrier-wise and symbol-wise BF
algorithms are reviewed, including their computational complexity. The mutual information
of any MIMO BF scheme is upper-bounded by the subcarrier-wise BF scheme of [58] used
in conjunction with the optimal (waterfilling) power allocation. This solution provides the
ability to assess other BF schemes with a bound that is generally tighter than the MIMO
channel capacity. Moreover, the symbol-wise BF concept introduced in this chapter forms
the basis for the development of low-complexity BF algorithms in Chapter 5.
Chapter 3 — MIMO Channel Model for 60 GHz Communications
Despite several standardisation efforts for 60 GHz communications (see Section 1.1.3), a
generic channel model for this frequency band is still not available. This chapter provides a
review of the IEEE 802.15.3c channel model, which is the most general model available to
date, and highlights its major limitations. Specifically, the lack of spatial channel character-
istics at the transmitter rules out the application of the IEEE 802.15.3c model in the MIMO
case, hence calling for alternative channel models. In this thesis, a ray-tracing-based channel
model is adopted, motivated by the ray-like propagation characteristics at 60 GHz. Based on
this continuous-time ray-tracing channel model, a discrete-time channel model for physical
layer simulations is obtained. Furthermore, this chapter provides a brief discussion of the
challenges arising from symbol-rate sampling in practical OFDM-based 60 GHz transceivers,
including the effects of analogue filtering and random timing offsets. The introduction of
the channel model is followed by a set of simulation results that demonstrate some typical
60 GHz channel characteristics such as high spatial correlation at the example of SISO chan-
nels. These initial results will facilitate the discussion of 60 GHz MIMO channels in later
chapters.
1.3. Contribution and Outline of Thesis 9
This chapter concludes with the derivation of a simple but general stochastic MIMO
channel model with Kronecker correlation [60]. While this model is not specifically tailored
to the 60 GHz MIMO channel, it will support the exploration of the performance of different
BF schemes under varying channel conditions in Chapters 5 and 6. Specifically, the level of
frequency selectivity and spatial correlation can be easily controlled via model parameters,
which is not possible in the ray-tracing model.
This chapter draws upon material previously published in:
I. D. Holland, A. Pollok, and W. G. Cowley, “Design and simulation of NLOS high data rate mm-wave
WLANs,” in Proc. NEWCOM-ACoRN Joint Workshop, Vienna, Austria, Sep. 2006.
Chapter 4 — Spatial Multiplexing
As mentioned earlier, no studies providing a quantitative insight into the multiplexing gains
of 60 GHz channels are available to date. Spatial multiplexing is illuminated from two dif-
ferent perspectives in this chapter, using not only the MIMO channel capacity, but also the
eigenvalue profile of the channel matrices. The first part of this chapter explores the effect
of antenna separation on the available multiplexing gains. Then, in the second part, spatial
multiplexing in conjunction with polarisation diversity is considered in LoS-dominated situ-
ations. Results show that whilst 60 GHz channels offer negligible multiplexing gains in the
general case, the polarisation-diversity-based approach is promising for transmissions over
short links. Furthermore, results in this chapter give a first indication of the near-optimality
of MIMO BF for mm-wave communications.
A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and I. D. Holland, “Multiple-input multiple-output options for 60 GHz line-
of-sight channels,” in Proc. Australian Commun. Theory Workshop (AusCTW), Christchurch, New
Zealand, Jan. 2008, pp. 101–106.
Chapter 5 — Symbol–Wise Beamforming
Symbol-wise BF has been considered as a low-complexity BF scheme for OFDM-based MIMO

systems [61]. Yet an upper bound on the mutual information of symbol-wise BF schemes
is unknown. While such a bound is available through subcarrier-wise BF, this bound is
generally loose when applied to the symbol-wise BF case. One of the aims of this chapter
is to derive a tighter performance limit. Due to the involved non-concave expression for
the mutual information of a symbol-wise BF system, finding such a bound in closed form
turned out to be not feasible. While searching for a more manageable optimisation metric,
an iterative symbol-wise BF algorithm was derived by maximising the received signal-to-
noise ratio averaged across all OFDM subcarriers. It was later discovered that an equivalent
algorithm had been proposed previously in [61], where the maximisation of the average pair-
wise codeword distance was attempted. While this algorithm has reasonably low complexity,
it experiences a drastic performance breakdown in the presence of co-channel interference.
This impediment is overcome by a generalised algorithm that was found by maximising
the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the input of the OFDM demodulator.
The structure of the associated optimality conditions motivated the development of a similar
iterative algorithm, using the corresponding mutual-information-based optimality conditions.
Despite the different optimisation criteria, both algorithms yield virtually identical solutions.
The algorithms not only provide the ability to assess other symbol-wise BF schemes, but also
options for a practical implementation. Specifically the SINR-based algorithm is an attractive
candidate for 60 GHz radios due to its low computational complexity.
Furthermore, results in this chapter demonstrate that despite the significantly lower com-
plexity of symbol-wise BF, the performance degradation relative to subcarrier-wise BF is only
small on 60 GHz channels. Simulation results also show that the relative performance loss
becomes smaller as spatial correlation increases or frequency selectivity decreases.
A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and N. Letzepis, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for MIMO-OFDM transceivers

in the presence of Co-Channel interference and spatial correlation,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun.,
vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 5755–5760, Dec. 2009.
A. Pollok, N. Letzepis, and W. G. Cowley, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for Co-Channel interference
reduction in MIMO-OFDM systems,” in Proc. IEEE Global Commun. Conf. (Globecom), Honolulu,
Hawaii, USA, Nov. 2009.
Chapter 6 — Beamforming Extensions
In this chapter, various extensions of the previously considered BF topics are discussed.
Primarily, these extensions are motivated by the fact that although symbol-wise BF schemes
are highly attractive from an implementation complexity point of view, they inevitably incur
a performance degradation. This penalty is caused by a reduced degree of freedom compared
to subcarrier-wise BF. This chapter aims to modify symbol-wise BF such that some of the
lost degrees of freedom are re-introduced without losing sight of the requirement for low
computational complexity. First, the application of existing symbol-wise BF schemes to
groups of subcarriers rather than the entire frequency band is considered. The resulting
performance gain stems from the independent optimisation of the antenna weights for the
individual groups. This subcarrier-group-wise BF scheme is then applied in the context
of OFDM-based multi-user communications. In the second part of this chapter, hybrid BF
systems are considered, where one terminal performs BF in a subcarrier-by-subcarrier fashion,
whereas the second terminal employs symbol-wise BF. This approach is well-suited when
only one of the terminals is strictly limited in its processing power. Two novel algorithms are
derived that compute the antenna weights for these asymmetric BF systems.
Chapter 7 — Conclusions
This chapter summarises the contribution and results presented in the individual chapters of
this thesis. The chapter then concludes with a discussion of potentially fruitful directions for
future work that have been opened up by the presented research.
Chapter 2
MIMO Communications
This chapter aims to lay the foundations for the remainder of this thesis, starting with the
introduction of a general system model for an OFDM-based MIMO communications system in
Section 2.1. Spatial multiplexing and the capacity of MIMO-OFDM channels are discussed
in Section 2.2. Following this, the joint use of transmit and receive BF is addressed in
Section 2.3, which also includes a review of different BF approaches from the literature.
2.1 System Model
2.1.1 Frequency–Flat Channel
The starting point for the derivations in this section is a frequency-flat channel. The obtained
system model will be generalised to the frequency-selective case in Section 2.1.2, where OFDM
will be adopted to mitigate the effects of frequency-selective fading. Consider a communica-
tions link between a transmitter with Mtx antennas and a receiver with Mrx antennas. Such
a system is conventionally referred to as Mtx ×Mrx MIMO system [52]. Initially, the band-
width is assumed to be less than the coherence bandwidth, i.e. the channel can be considered
frequency-flat [62]. Assuming perfect receiver synchronisation, the complex baseband model
of the MIMO system at time index k can be described as [48]
y[k] = Hs[k] + w[k], (2.1)
where s ∈ CMtx ×1 and y ∈ CMrx ×1 are the transmitted and received symbol vectors, and
H ∈ CMrx ×Mtx the channel matrix with entries hi,j . The entry hi,j corresponds to the
channel magnitude and phase response between the j th transmit and the ith receive antenna.
In this thesis, system performance is assessed in terms of the mutual information I (s; y)
between the channel input s and the channel output y [63]. As it is well-known that the
mutual information is maximised by a zero-mean circularly-symmetric complex Gaussian
input distribution [7, p.303], s is assumed to follow this distribution. Let the covariance
matrix of s be denoted as
n o
Q = E s[k]s† [k] , (2.2)
where E{·} and (·)† denote the expectation and Hermitian operators, respectively. Further-
more, w ∈ CMrx ×1 in Eq. (2.1) is a temporally uncorrelated zero-mean circularly-symmetric
complex Gaussian noise vector with arbitrary covariance matrix Rw . Unless stated explicitly,
12 Chapter 2. MIMO Communications
w models the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) case, where the vector elements are
2 . In this case, the covariance matrix of w is given by
assumed to be i.i.d. with variance σw
n o
Rw = E w[k]w† [k] = σw 2
I Mrx , (2.3)
where I M denotes the identity matrix of size M . Later in Section 2.3 and in Chapter 5, the
presence of interfering terminals will be considered. Note that when w models the combined
effect of noise and co-channel interference, Rw will generally not be proportional to the
identity matrix.
In practice, the transmission is constrained to a maximum average transmit power per
symbol Ps . In order to ensure that this power constraint is not violated, the trace of the
input covariance matrix Q must satisfy [48]
n o
tr(Q) = E s† [k]s[k] 6 Ps . (2.4)
2 , which can be interpreted as the average signal-to-noise ratio

For later use, let SNR = Ps /σw
(SNR) per receive antenna under unit channel gain.
2.1.2 Frequency–Selective Channel
In 60 GHz communications, the length of the channel impulse response (CIR) exceeds the
duration of one time-domain symbol in most situations as a result of high symbol rates, or
equivalently, short symbol durations [4]. Due to this time-dispersive nature of the channel,
which is caused by multipath propagation, the transmitted symbols are smeared across several
received symbols, giving rise to inter-symbol interference (ISI) [7, p.75]. The frequency-
domain manifestation of the time-dispersiveness is that the channel transfer function varies
across the bandwidth. The channel is said to be frequency-selective [7, p.80].
A channel that extends over L symbols can be described as a tapped delay line. In the
MIMO case, each of the L channel taps H l ∈ CMrx ×Mtx , l = 0, . . . , L−1, is matrix-valued.
The MIMO system can no longer be described by Eq. (2.1) and a modified model [50]
L−1
X
y[k] = H l s[l − k] + w[k] (2.5)
l=0
needs to be considered. The summation is the convolution of the CIR with the stream of
symbol vectors s, which accounts for the ISI. Furthermore, w models AWGN (and possibly
co-channel interference) as described in Section 2.1.1.
OFDM is a widely used technique to mitigate the effects of delay spread and ISI on SISO
channels [64,65]. The basic idea behind OFDM is to divide the bandwidth into N orthogonal
subchannels, each of which can be considered frequency-flat. A high-rate input symbol stream
is multiplexed across the subchannels, which are commonly referred to as subcarriers. Since
the resulting symbol rate on the individual subcarriers is by a factor of 1/N lower than the
original symbol rate, the transmission is less prone to ISI. Due to the orthogonality of the
OFDM subcarriers, computationally complex time-domain equalisation can be replaced by
simple one-tap equalisation on the individual subcarriers.
MIMO–OFDM
The concept of OFDM modulation can be readily extended to frequency-selective MIMO

channels [66, 50, 67], resulting in the system structure depicted in Fig. 2.1. The symbols of
2.1. System Model 13
[S 0 ]1 N N
DEMUX &
…
MUX [S N −1 ]1 IDFT CP insertion j=1
Space–Time Encoder
[S 0 ]2
DEMUX &
MUX or
MUX [S 1 ]2 IDFT
…
CP insertion j=2
[S N −1 ]2 N N
…
[S 0 ]Mtx N N
[S 1 ]Mtx
DEMUX &
MUX IDFT
…
CP insertion j=Mtx
[S N −1 ]Mtx
(a) Transmitter
[Y 0 ]1 N N
CP removal
…
DEMUX [Y N −1 ]1 DFT & MUX i=1
Further Receiver
[Y 0 ]2
Processing
[Y 1 ]2 CP removal
DEMUX DFT
…
& MUX i=2
[Y N −1 ]2 N N
…
…
[Y 0 ]Mrx N N
[Y 1 ]Mrx
CP removal
DEMUX DFT
…
& MUX i=Mrx
[Y N −1 ]Mrx
(b) Receiver
Figure 2.1: OFDM-based MIMO communications system.
the input stream, usually generated by encoding, bit interleaving and symbol mapping, are
assigned to the individual antenna elements (either by a simple multiplexer or by a space-time
encoder). The resulting symbol streams are then multiplexed across the subcarriers. Let S n ,
n = 0, . . . , N −1, denote the symbol vector transmitted on the nth subcarrier. Analogous to
the previous section, the S n are assumed to be mutually uncorrelated zero-mean circularly-
symmetric complex Gaussian vectors. Furthermore, the input covariance matrices are Qn =
†

E S n S n and the average transmit power constraint for each block of N symbol vectors
reads
N
X −1
tr(Qn ) 6 N Ps . (2.6)
n=0
As can be seen in Fig. 2.1, a characteristic feature of OFDM is its block-wise operation. A
block of N symbol vectors S n is OFDM-modulated by means of an N -point inverse discrete
Fourier transform (IDFT)1 to yield N time-domain symbols2
N −1
1 X n
s[k] = √ S n ej2πk N , (2.7)
N n=0
where k = 0, . . . , N −1. It can easily be shown that s[k] is temporally uncorrelated due to
the assumption that S n is uncorrelated across subcarriers. Note that Eq. (2.7) corresponds
to Mtx separate IDFTs as shown in Fig. 2.1(a). The output of each IDFT processor is
demultiplexed and the last Ncp symbols are duplicated and prepended as cyclic prefix (CP)
to form the OFDM symbol of length N + Ncp . In matrix notation, the OFDM symbol can
be represented as
1
√
In the literature, the IDFT is often defined with a scaling factor 1/N instead of 1/
√ N , whilst the DFT
is defined without scaling factor. In this work, both DFT and IDFT are scaled by 1/ N in order to render
the average power invariant under the transform (unitary transform).
2
Note that the OFDM symbol index is omitted for brevity of notation.
k = −Ncp −Ncp +1 ··· −1 0 1 ··· N −1

(2.8)
s[N −Ncp ] s[N −Ncp +1] · · · s[N −1] s[0] s[1] · · · s[N −1] .
| {z } | {z }
Cyclic prefix Data
The CP is contained in the first Ncp columns (corresponding to negative values of the index k),
whereas the actual data symbol vectors are contained in the last N columns (corresponding
to positive values of k). The purpose of this cyclic extension is to avoid ISI between successive
OFDM symbols. Thus, the CP length needs to be chosen equal to or greater than the channel
length, i.e. Ncp > L. After the CP insertion, the OFDM symbol is transmitted from the j th
antenna.
Assume that the receiver is synchronised to the exact start of the OFDM symbol and that
the CP is at least as long as the CIR. The receiver discards the first Ncp received samples
that correspond to the CP. The remaining samples for k = 0, . . . , N −1 are
L−1
X
y[k] = H l s[k − l] + w[k]. (2.9)
l=0
Note that the convolution in this expression is circular with period N due to the cyclic
extension according to Eq. (2.8). On the contrary, it was linear in Eq. (2.5). Subsequently,
the block of N received vectors y[k] undergoes an N -point discrete Fourier transform (DFT),
which realises the OFDM demodulation. The demodulated symbol vector on subcarrier n is
found as
N −1
1 X n
Yn = √ y[k]e−j2πk N
N k=0
N −1 L−1
!
1 X X n
=√ H l s[k − l] + w[k] e−j2πk N
N k=0 l=0
N −1 L−1 N −1
!
1 X X 1 X n0 n
=√ Hl √ S n0 ej2π(k−l) N e−j2πk N + W n ,
N k=0 l=0 N n0 =0
where in the last step, s was substituted for according to Eq. (2.7). Furthermore, W n and
w[k] are simply related via the DFT, i.e.
N −1
1 X n
Wn = √ w[k]e−j2πk N , (2.10)
N k=0
and it can easily be shown that the Gaussian vectors W n are uncorrelated across subcarriers
as a result of w[k] being temporally uncorrelated (see Section 2.1). For later use, let the
covariance matrix of W n be defined as RW n = E W n W †n , where the expectation is across

W n realisations associated with different OFDM symbols. Rearranging terms and taking
into account that the complex exponential exp (−j2πkn/N ) is periodic with N results in
L−1 N −1 N −1
X X n0 1 X −j2πk (n−n0 )
Yn = Hl S n0 e−j2πl N e N + Wn
N
l=0 n0 =0
| k=0 {z }
δnn0
L−1
X n
= H l e−j2πl N S n + Wn
|l=0 {z }
Hn
2.2. Spatial Multiplexing 15
where δnn0 denotes the Dirac delta and

L−1
X n
Hn = H l e−j2πl N (2.11)
l=0
is the discrete frequency response of the channel. The final system model for subcarrier n is
given by
Y n = Hn S n + Wn . (2.12)
It can be seen that Eq. (2.12) is just a frequency-flat channel in the form of Eq. (2.1). Further-
more, the absence of inter-carrier interference highlights the orthogonality of the subcarriers
– OFDM opens up a set of N parallel MIMO channels.3 It needs to be stressed that frequency
offsets, symbol-clock offsets, oscillator phase noise and sample-clock variations generally cause
inter-carrier interference and thus, result in a loss of orthogonality. Some practical approaches
for the receiver synchronisation in MIMO-OFDM systems, including timing recovery and fre-
quency synchronisation, are discussed in [67]. However, they are beyond the scope of this
work and are not considered further.
In order to recover the transmitted data, the symbol streams obtained in the individual
receive antenna branches are further processed, which may include space-time symbol detec-
tion and error correction decoding. As this processing depends on the particular transmission
scheme and receiver implementation, it is not explicitly shown in Fig. 2.1(b).
Before concluding this section, it should be noted that the described system model also
covers a number of special cases, which are listed in the following.
1. SISO channel with Mtx = Mrx = 1. In this case, the channel taps H l and subcarrier
channels Hn are scalar-valued.
2. Single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channel with Mtx = 1. In this case, the channel
taps H l and subcarrier channels Hn are column vectors of size (Mrx ×1).
3. Multiple-input single-output (MISO) channel with Mrx = 1. In this case, the channel
taps H l and subcarrier channels Hn are row vectors of size (1×Mtx ).
4. Frequency-flat channel with L = 1 tap. Using Eq. (2.11), it is easily verified that the
frequency response of the channel is constant across all subcarriers in this case, i.e.
Hn = H 0 = H for all n.
2.2 Spatial Multiplexing
2.2.1 Capacity
As mentioned in Section 1.2.1, a MIMO channel offers a set of eigenmodes, which a spa-
tial multiplexing system utilises for the transmission of multiple independent parallel data
streams. To explore the applicability of spatial multiplexing in typical 60 GHz MIMO chan-
nels, the channel capacity will be used in Chapter 4. This section gives a review of the
channel capacity associated with a given realisation of a MIMO channel, assuming either full
or no channel knowledge at the transmitter. The review covers frequency-flat channels, as
well as frequency-selective channels. The channel capacity is given by the mutual information
I (s; y) between the channel input s and the channel output y, maximised with respect to
3
Note however that the elements of the channel matrices Hn are correlated across subcarriers.
all possible input distributions [7]. It is well known that the optimal input distribution is
zero-mean circularly-symmetric complex Gaussian [7]. Note that this distribution has already
been assumed in Section 2.1. Hence, it only remains to optimise the input covariance matrix
Q (or the matrices Qn when considering the MIMO-OFDM case).
In this thesis, outage capacity [47] is used to assess the performance and reliability that
a communications system can achieve for a given ensembles of channel realisations. The
outage capacity Cout,q is the information rate that is supported by 100(1 − q)% of these
channel realisations, i.e.
Pr(C 6 Cout,q ) = q, (2.13)
where the percentile q denotes the outage probability and where C is the capacity associated
with the individual channel realisations. A channel realisation that cannot support the rate
Cout,q counts as an outage. For example, ensembles of 60 GHz channels are obtained by means
of ray tracing in this thesis (see Chapter 3). Assuming fixed positions of the transmitter and
receiver in a given static propagation environment, the channel is deterministic and does
not change with time. Unless the transmitter or receiver are moved within the environment,
the channel remains fixed. In this context, outage capacity refers to the information rate
that can be achieved for a given percentage of all simulated combinations of transmitter and
receiver locations. Note that the definition of the outage capacity depends on the specific type
of channel. For example, the channel conditions of a block-fading channel remain constant
during each transmission burst, but change randomly between bursts (based on a certain
fading distribution) [7, p.96]. In this case, outage capacity refers to the information rate that
can be achieved for a given percentage of fading blocks [7, p.96].
Frequency–Flat Channel
For a given channel realisation of a frequency-flat MIMO channel (see Section 2.1.1), the aver-
age input-output mutual information in bits per second per Hertz (bps/Hz) can be computed
as [48]

1 †
I = I (s; y) = log2 det I Mrx + 2 HQH . (2.14)
σw
Let the singular value decomposition (SVD) [68] of the channel matrix be defined as
H = U ΣV † , (2.15)
where U ∈ CMrx ×Mrx and V ∈ CMtx ×Mtx are unitary matrices, whose columns are the left
and right singular vectors
√ of H. Furthermore, Σ ∈ CMrx ×Mtx is a diagonal matrix with
non-negative entries λm , where λm are the eigenvalues of HH † . After replacing H by its
SVD, Eq. (2.14) becomes

1 † † †
I = log2 det I Mrx + 2 U ΣV QV Σ U
σw

1 † † †
= log2 det I Mrx + 2 ΣV QV Σ U U
σw

1 † †
= log2 det I Mrx + 2 ΣV QV Σ , (2.16)
σw
where in the first step, the determinant identity det(I + AB) = det(I + BA) for matrices
A ∈ Cp×q and B ∈ Cq×p [68] was used, and where the simplification U † U = I Mrx in the
second step stems from the fact that U is unitary.
It is well known that the optimal choice of Q depends on the level of channel knowledge
available at the transmitter. Let us first consider the case where the transmitter does not
know the channel realisation H. In this case, a reasonable strategy is to choose Q as (e.g.
see [69, 7])
Ps
Q= IM , (2.17)
Mtx tx
which corresponds to a uniform transmit power allocation to all transmit antennas. The
capacity Cep resulting from this equal power (EP) allocation is given by4

Ps †
Cep = log2 det I Mrx + 2 HH
σw Mtx

SNR † †
= log2 det I Mrx + ΣV V Σ
Mtx

SNR
= log2 det I Mrx + ΣΣ † , (2.18)
Mtx
where in the last step, it was taken into account that V is unitary. Noting that the determi-
nant of a diagonal matrix is just the product of the diagonal entries [68], the final expression
for the capacity is found as [52, 50]
rank(H)
X SNR
Cep = log2 1 + λm , (2.19)
Mtx
m=1
where λm are the rank(H) non-zero eigenvalues of HH † . Eq. (2.19) offers an intuitive
explanation of the spatial multiplexing gain as it can be interpreted as the capacity of rank(H)
independent parallel SISO channels.
√ These SISO channels are the aforementioned eigenmodes
and their channel gains equal λm . Note that each of the eigenmodes uses the full spectrum
of the MIMO channel, i.e. the multiplexing gain can be achieved without any increase in
transmit power or bandwidth.
Now let us assume that the transmitter perfectly knows H. In this case, the transmit-
ter can decompose the channel matrix using the SVD and hence, has direct access to the
eigenmodes and can optimally share the available transmit power among them. In order to
maximise the mutual information, the input covariance matrix Q must be chosen such that
the matrix V † QV in Eq. (2.16) is non-negative diagonal [48]. The diagonal entries µm Ps
are the power allocations to the eigenmodes. The optimal value of µm is obtained using the
waterfilling (WF) algorithm and is given by [48]
+
1 1
µm = − , (2.20)
η SNRλm
where m = 1, . . . , rank(H) and where the operation (x)+ yields the maximum of zero and
the real-valued scalar x. The waterlevel η is chosen to satisfy
rank(H)
X
µm = 1. (2.21)
m=1
4
Note that Cep is not the channel capacity in the true sense as there might be a Q that results in a higher
mutual information. Nevertheless, this terminology is often used in the literature (e.g. see [69, 7]) and is also
adopted in this thesis.
Again taking into account that the determinant of a diagonal matrix equals the product of
the diagonal entries [68], the MIMO capacity for perfect channel knowledge at the transmitter
is found from Eq. (2.16) as [48]
rank(H)
X
Cwf = log2 (1 + SNRµm λm ) . (2.22)
m=1
Frequency–Selective Channel
When computing the mutual information of a frequency-selective channel, its variations across
the channel bandwidth need to be taken into account. To do so, the spectrum is first di-
vided into infinitesimally narrow subchannels [7, p.107]. Since each of these subchannels
are frequency-flat, their mutual information can be easily computed. In a second step, the
mutual information associated with the entire frequency band is found by integrating over
the contributions of the infinitesimal subchannels [7, p.107]. When the bandwidth is divided
into N finite-width subchannels rather than infinitesimal subchannels, this integration can be
replaced by a summation. This approach is also used in the context of OFDM-based MIMO
systems [54], taking advantage of the underlying assumption that the subcarrier channels
have a flat frequency response (see Section 2.1.2). Based on Eq. (2.14), the expression for
the mutual information of MIMO-OFDM channels is found as [54]
N −1
1 X 1 †
I= log2 det I Mrx + 2 Hn Qn Hn , (2.23)
N σw
n=0
where the matrices are defined as in Section 2.1.2. The factor 1/N in Eq. (2.23) indicates
that each subcarrier uses one-N th of the entire bandwidth. Note that the mutual information
of a MIMO-OFDM channel according to Eq. (2.23) is only an approximation of the mutual
information of the corresponding continuous-frequency channel. However, it was shown in
[66] that in the limit N → ∞, this approximation converges. Asymptotically, OFDM is
therefore lossless in terms of mutual information (and thus also capacity-lossless). In practice,
reasonably small values of N , say N = 64, are typically enough for the approximation to be
sufficiently accurate.
Based on Eq. (2.23), the MIMO-OFDM channel capacity can be computed for different
levels of transmit side channel knowledge. Without channel knowledge at the transmitter,
the most reasonable strategy is to evenly allocate the available transmit power across all
transmit antennas, as well as all subcarriers [69]. This is achieved by the input covariance
matrices [69]
Ps
Qn = IM . (2.24)
Mtx tx
Using similar steps as in the frequency-flat case discussed in the previous section, the resulting
capacity is found from Eq. (2.23) as [54, 69]
N −1
1 X SNR
Cep = log2 det I Mrx + Hn H†n
N Mtx
n=0
N −1 rank(H
X n)
1 X SNR
= log2 1 + λn,m , (2.25)
N Mtx
n=0 m=1
where λn,m denotes the mth non-zero eigenvalue of Hn H†n . On the other hand, if the channel
is known at the transmitter, the capacity is obtained as [69]
N −1 rank(Hn )
1 X X
Cwf = log2 (1 + SNRµn,m λn,m ) , (2.26)
N
n=0 m=1
again using similar steps as in the frequency-flat case. In the frequency-flat case, the waterfill-
ing algorithm was used to optimally distribute the transmit power across the eigenmodes. In
the considered frequency-selective case, waterfilling needs to be performed across space and
frequency [66]. The optimal power allocation to the mth eigenmode on the nth subcarrier is
given by µn,m Ps with
+
1 1
µn,m = − , (2.27)
η SNRλn,m
where the waterlevel η is chosen to satisfy
N
X −1 rank(H
X n)
µn,m = N. (2.28)
n=0 m=1
To conclude this section, it should be mentioned that the expressions for a frequency-flat
channel result as a special case. Specifically, Eqs. (2.25) and (2.26) with Hn = H for all n
simplify to Eqs. (2.19) and (2.22), respectively.
2.2.2 Polarisation Diversity
Typically, MIMO signalling techniques such as spatial multiplexing and transmit diversity
rely on sufficiently large spatial separation of the antenna elements. If the antenna spacings
are insufficient, the channels between different transmitter-receiver pairs are highly corre-
lated, significantly reducing the multiplexing or spatial diversity gain. This can occur, for
example, in situations with limited scattering. However, large spacings imply increased phys-
ical size and cost of devices and thus, are not desirable in practical communications systems –
particularly for hand-held devices. Polarisation diversity [70,71,72] is an alternative approach
to increase the multiplexing or spatial diversity gain, while keeping the antenna arrays more
compact. For polarisation diversity, antenna elements with multiple polarisations are em-
ployed. For example, the use of a single dual-polarised antenna with orthogonal polarisations
instead of two spatially separated uni-polarised antennas was proposed in [70]. The amount of
correlation between different polarisation modes depends on the propagation environment, as
well as the cross-polarisation discrimination (XPD) of the antennas [70]. The XPD describes
the ability of an antenna element to separate orthogonal polarisations, or in other words,
how much cross-coupling occurs between orthogonal polarisations. However, even when us-
ing antennas with perfect XPD, polarisation mixing of some degree occurs due to multipath
propagation and scattering. Provided that the channel induces only limited polarisation
mixing, polarisation diversity potentially offers a significant spatial data pipe per orthogonal
polarisation. Simulation results in Section 4.2 indicate that the effect of polarisation mixing
is comparably small at 60 GHz and thus, polarisation diversity is a promising approach to
still achieve multiplexing gain – despite high levels of spatial correlation. Please refer to
Chapter 4 for a more detailed discussion.
Note that in the system model introduced in Section 2.1, no distinction between spatially
separated antennas and different polarisations is required – each polarisation mode is simply
treated as a separate physical channel. Therefore, the capacity expressions in the previous
sections still hold true when multi-polarised antennas are employed.
N N
DEMUX &
…
IDFT CP insertion j=1
v N −2
N DEMUX &
…
IDFT CP insertion j=2
MUX
…
N N
v0
…
N N
… IDFT
DEMUX &
…
CP insertion j=Mtx
(a) Transmitter
N N
CP removal
…
DFT & MUX i=1
uN −2
N CP removal
…
DFT & MUX i=2
DEMUX
…
N N
u0
…
N N
… … DFT
CP removal
…
& MUX i=Mrx
(b) Receiver
Figure 2.2: Subcarrier-wise BF for OFDM systems.
2.3 MIMO Beamforming
2.3.1 Subcarrier–Wise Beamforming
Conventional BF techniques such as those outlined in Section 1.2.2 are designed for frequency-
flat channels. As the signal bandwidth grows, the channel becomes increasingly frequency-
selective and the performance of these schemes starts to deteriorate [45, Section II.G]. One
approach to compensate for these degradations is to employ a broad-band beamformer. In
addition to the complex weights, this structure uses a finite impulse response (FIR) filter
in each antenna branch to enforce a certain frequency response in the beam pointing direc-
tion [45, Section II.G]. Alternatively, frequency-domain BF [45, Section II.I] represents a
straightforward way of extending narrow-band BF schemes to frequency-selective radio chan-
nels. After transforming the received broad-band signal into the frequency domain by means
of a DFT, each frequency bin is processed by a separate narrow-band BF structure – the
optimal steering direction is potentially different for each bin. Instead of a single BF weight
per antenna element, their number is equal to the DFT size. In single-carrier systems, the
signal is transformed back into the time domain for further processing. Note that frequency-
domain transmit BF is carried out in analogous manner. Frequency-domain BF lends itself
particularly well to MIMO-OFDM systems, which modulate (demodulate) the signal using
the IDFT (DFT) as described in Section 2.1.2. In this case, the actual BF operation is
performed on a subcarrier-by-subcarrier basis and thus, needs to be carried out prior to the
IDFT at the transmitter and after the DFT at the receiver as depicted in Fig. 2.2.
The general model for MIMO-OFDM spatial multiplexing systems presented in Sec-
tion 2.1.2 can easily be specialised to BF. Recall that each subcarrier of a spatial multiplexing
system carries multiple spatial streams in parallel. In contrast, only one spatial stream is
assigned to each subcarrier when BF is used.5 Let the data symbol transmitted on subcar-
rier n be denoted as Sn0 ∈ C and assume that the Sn0 are mutually uncorrelated zero-mean
circularly-symmetric complex Gaussian, which is the input distribution that maximises the
5
Note that the term BF is occasionally also used to refer to linear precoding and equalisation in spatial
multiplexing systems (e.g. see [74]). In this thesis, the term will exclusively be used in the context of a single
spatial stream (per subcarrier).
2.3. MIMO Beamforming 21
mutual information [7]. The transmitted signal vectors S n are then generated as
S n = v n Sn0 , (2.29)
where v n ∈ CMtx ×1 are the weight vectors for the transmit antenna array. In Fig. 2.2(a), this
operation is symbolised by the block labelled v n . It is easily confirmed that the corresponding
input covariance matrices Qn have unit rank by considering
n o n o
2
Qn = E S n S †n = E Sn0 v n v †n . (2.30)
Assuming a power allocation

n o
2
E Sn0 = µn Ps , (2.31)
N
X −1
µn = N, (2.32)
n=0
the transmit power constraint according to Eq. (2.6) now reads

N
X −1 N
X −1
tr(Qn ) = Ps µn v †n v n 6 N Ps , (2.33)
n=0 n=0
which implies that v n must satisfy v †n v n 6 1.

After OFDM modulation and CP insertion, the signal is transmitted over the channel. At
the receiver, the samples corresponding to the CP are discarded from the signal induced on
the receive antenna array, before it is OFDM demodulated. Assuming perfect OFDM symbol
timing and sufficient CP length as in Section 2.1.2, the received signal vector on subcarrier
n becomes
Y n = Hn S n + Wn . (2.34)
Analogous to the BF operation at the transmitter, the received vector Y n is post-processed

by the receive antenna weight vector un ∈ CMrx ×1 to yield the received symbol
Yn0 = u†n Y n = u†n Hn v n Sn0 + u†n Wn . (2.35)
The receive BF operation is represented by the block labelled un in Fig. 2.2(b). Note that
the effective channels u†n Hn v n resulting from joint transmit and receive BF are no longer
matrix-valued but scalar.
For the remainder of this chapter, the general case with noise and co-channel interfer-
ence, originating from one or more interfering terminals, is considered. As in the previous
sections, the vectors W n are assumed to be Gaussian. However, in the presence of interfer-
ence, the corresponding covariance matrices RW n will generally not be proportional to the
identity matrix (see Section 5.5.3, where a specific interference model will be defined). From
Eq. (2.35), the average received SINR on the nth subcarrier is found as
n 2 o
E u†n Hn v n Sn0
SINRn (un , v n , µn ) = n 2 o
E u†n W n
†
† † 0 0 †
E un Hn v n un Hn v n Sn Sn
= †
† †
E un W n un W n
n o
2
u†n Hn v n v †n H†n un E Sn0
=
u†n RW n un
u†n Hn v n v †n H†n un
= µn P s , (2.36)
u†n RW n un
where the expectation was carried out across OFDM symbols. Let SINRep,n (un , v n ) be short-
hand for the SINR resulting from an equal power allocation, i.e.
SINRep,n (un , v n ) = SINRn (un , v n , µn = 1) (2.37)
With this definition, the SINR according to Eq. (2.36) can be conveniently written as
SINRn (un , v n , µn ) = µn SINRep,n (un , v n ) (2.38)
for non-uniform power allocations.
Optimal Subcarrier–Wise Beamforming
In general, input covariance matrices Qn of full rank are necessary to achieve MIMO capacity
(see Section 2.2). In an OFDM-based BF system, the input covariance matrices according to
Eq. (2.30) have rank one and therefore, BF is generally not capacity-lossless. Nevertheless, the
highest possible mutual information that can be achieved by a BF system is still of interest.
This limit provides the ability to quantify the loss of BF relative to channel capacity and
thus, can be used to assess the suitability of a channel for BF. Recall that as a result of joint
transmit and receive BF, the effective channel reduces to a SISO-OFDM channel, whose
mutual information can be computed as [7]
N −1
1 X
I(un , v n , µn ) = log2 (1 + SINRn (un , v n , µn )) , (2.39)
N
n=0
where SINRn is the per-subcarrier SINR according to Eq. (2.36). Clearly, the maximisation
of Eq. (2.39) is equivalent to the maximisation of SINRn over un , v n and µn , n = 0, . . . , N −1.
First, consider a uniform power allocation with µn = 1. For this case, the optimal antenna
weight vectors can be derived based on the following theorem (see Section A.1 for the proof).
Theorem 2.1. The SINR on subcarrier n is upper bounded by
SINRep,n (un , v n ) 6 Ps v †n H†n R−1

W n Hn v n .
This bound is satisfied with equality if and only if un ∝ R−1

W n Hn v n .
This theorem illustrates that the design process of un and v n is actually decoupled. First,
v n can be chosen to maximise the upper bound and then, un can be chosen such that the
condition for the bound to be tight is satisfied. This procedure yields the following design
rules for the optimal vectors ûn and v̂ n [58]:6
1. choose v̂ n as the dominant eigenvector of H†n R−1 †

W n Hn normalised such that v̂ n v̂ n = 1,
2. compute ûn ∝ R−1
W n Hn v̂ n based on v̂ n from the first step.
6
Throughout this thesis, the notation x̂ is used to indicate the value of a variable x at an optimal or
stationary point.
This solution will henceforth be referred to as maxSINRsc BF. Note that only proportionality
is required in the second step. The scaling of ûn does not affect the value of SINRn , which
can be easily verified by substituting an arbitrarily scaled version of ûn into Eq. (2.36). The
resulting value of SINRn is given by Ps times the largest eigenvalue of H†n R−1W n Hn , i.e. [58]

SINRep,n (ûn , v̂ n ) = Ps λmax H†n R−1
Wn H n . (2.40)
It was shown in [59] that the optimisation of the power allocation can be carried out indepen-
dently. Several different performance measures are discussed in [59] and the corresponding
optimisation problems can be solved using convex optimisation [73]. A more detailed study
of the topic can be found in [74], which also covers the generalisation to the case of spatial
multiplexing. Various objective functions of the per-subcarrier mean squared errors MSEs
between the transmitted and received symbols, the per-subcarrier SINRs, and other perfor-
mance metrics are considered. In particular, it turns out that the maximisation of each SINRn
is equivalent to the minimisation of the corresponding per-subcarrier MSE, i.e. the optimi-
sation of both metrics leads to the solution discussed previously. In a last step, a design
criterion of how to allocate the power to the subcarriers can then be obtained by applying
different objective functions such as the (un)weighted sum or the (un)weighted product to the
SINRs. For example, maximising the unweighted product of the SINRn yields the standard
waterfilling algorithm, which is the solution that maximises the mutual information. Due
to the information theoretic perspective in this work, only the waterfilling solution will be
considered. The mutual information according to Eq. (2.39) combined with the waterfilling
solution [7] reads
N −1
1 X
I= log2 1 + Ps µ̂n λmax H†n R−1
W n Hn , (2.41)
N
n=0
!+
1 1
µ̂n = − , (2.42)
η Ps λmax H†n R−1

W n Hn
where the waterlevel η is chosen such that Eq. (2.32) is satisfied. When interference is
2I
absent and the noise is spatially white, the covariance matrices become RW n = σw Mrx and
Eqs. (2.41) and (2.42) simplify to
N −1
1 X
I= log2 1 + SNRµ̂n λmax H†n Hn , (2.43)
N
n=0
!+
1 1
µ̂n = − . (2.44)
η SNRλmax H†n Hn

Note that in this special case, the optimal vectors un and v n coincide with the dominant left
and right singular vectors of Hn [69]. Transmission occurs only along the dominant channel
eigenmode and therefore, this scheme is also referred to as dominant eigenmode transmission
(DET) [69]. The terms maximal ratio combining (MRC), maximal ratio transmission (MRT)
or transmit-MRC are also used in this context [69].
As mentioned earlier, maxSINRsc BF is generally not MIMO capacity-achieving, i.e. spa-
tial multiplexing is theoretically superior. However, as the spatial correlation increases, the
MIMO channel capacity reduces. This effect has been studied extensively in the literature
(e.g. see [54, 53]) and can be attributed to a decreasing strength of the weaker channel eigen-
modes (also see Section 1.2.1). In the limit of full correlation, only a single non-zero eigen-
mode remains per subcarrier and maxSINRsc BF, which transmits only one spatial stream
per subcarrier (unit-rank input covariance matrices), should be able to achieve capacity. In
fact, the asymptotic optimality of continuous-frequency BF (equivalent to subcarrier-wise
BF with N → ∞) in conjunction with WF was shown in [75], using a stochastic frequency-
selective channel model. It should also be mentioned that BF is capacity-achieving when the
SINR is sufficiently low [75]. Once the SINR drops below a certain threshold on all subcar-
riers, the WF algorithm activates the strongest eigenmode of each subcarrier only and thus,
maxSINRsc BF achieves Cwf .
Computational Complexity and Feedback Requirements
A separate IDFT block is required in every antenna branch at the transmitter as shown in
Fig. 2.2. Similarly, the signals induced on the individual receive antennas need to be processed
by a separate N -point DFT. Although the DFT can be efficiently implemented via the fast
Fourier transform (FFT), the overall computational complexity may still be prohibitive for
practical communications systems. Particularly, gigabit wireless systems such as 60 GHz
radios have stringent requirements for low implementation cost, processing delay and power
consumption. The total number of complex arithmetic operations of an N -point FFT or
inverse FFT is O(N log2 N ) [76] and thus, the overall computational complexity amounts
to O((Mtx + Mrx ) N log2 N ). On top of this, the complexity associated with the antenna
weight vector computation needs to be taken into account. Per subcarrier, an eigenvalue
decomposition (EVD) is required to compute v n , plus some further matrix-vector arithmetic
for the computation of un . For square matrices of size n, direct EVD methods typically have
a cost of O n3 operations [77]. In the considered case, the matrices H†n R−1

W n Hn are of size
3

Mtx ×Mtx and thus, the total complexity of N EVDs is O N Mtx . Given only the dominant
eigenvector is of interest, some computational overhead can be avoided by using the power
method [78, p.330]. Under some mild conditions, this iterative technique converges to the
dominant eigenvector (see Section 5.4 for more details).
It should also be noted that the optimisation procedure for maxSINRsc BF requires full
channel knowledge: to compute the optimal parameters ûn , v̂ n and µ̂n , all channel matrices
Hn and all interference-plus-noise covariance matrices RW n need to be known. In practical
implementations, this channel knowledge is commonly obtained at the receiver by means of
estimation. A feedback link is required in this case to communicate all v̂ n and µ̂n to the
transmitter. Alternatively, the transmitter can compute these quantities locally, provided it
is able to acquire full channel knowledge in some way.
In systems that use a large number of subcarriers, the required amount of feedback and
the associated reduction in spectral efficiency can be considerable. Whilst N real-valued
scalars µ̂n need to be fed back for the power allocation, each of the N vectors v̂ n has Mtx
complex entries. In the literature, various approaches that reduce the amount of feedback
have been proposed, including interpolation-based approaches such as [79]. Taking advantage
of the correlations of the optimal BF vectors across subcarriers, v̂ n is fed back only for some
of the subcarriers. At the transmitter, the vectors for the remaining subcarriers are computed
by means of interpolation.
2.3.2 Symbol–Wise Beamforming
Due the relatively high computational complexity of subcarrier-wise BF, several approaches
that aim to reduce the complexity have been proposed in the literature. In the context of
OFDM systems with one transmit but multiple receive antennas, [80] proposed a pre-DFT
combining scheme. Instead of employing subcarrier-wise BF to optimally combine the Mrx
received signals of a particular subcarrier, the received signals are already combined in the
j=1
N N j=2
DEMUX & v
IDFT
…
MUX
…
CP insertion
j=Mtx
(a) Transmitter
i=1
N N i=2
CP removal u
DFT
…
DEMUX
…
& MUX
i=Mrx
(b) Receiver
Figure 2.3: Symbol-wise BF for OFDM systems.
time domain prior to OFDM demodulation, i.e. in the fashion of narrowband BF. Hence,
only a single DFT block is required at the receiver. The optimal receive antenna weights
are obtained by means of SNR maximisation. Pre-DFT BF in the presence of co-channel
interference was considered in [81] and an iterative algorithm for the weight computation is
proposed. The authors of [82] later extended the scheme of [80] to the case with non-zero ISI
between adjacent OFDM symbols and derived the optimal antenna weights by maximising
the SINR at the input of the DFT block. Further work related to pre-DFT BF can be found
in [83, 84]. Similar transmit BF schemes have not been considered in the literature.
The generalisation of [80] to the MIMO case was considered in [61]. Adopting the concept
of pre-DFT BF, the processing for transmit BF is also carried out in the time domain, i.e. after
the IDFT. Consequently, only one DFT processor is required at each terminal as depicted
in Fig. 2.3. The transmit and receive weight vectors u and v are kept fixed for the entire
OFDM symbol, or equivalently, across all subcarriers. This approach will subsequently be
referred to as symbol-wise BF. Structurally, symbol-wise BF corresponds to joint narrowband
transmit and receive BF applied to a frequency-selective channel. The novelty is that [61]
attempts to optimise the transmit and receive weight vectors jointly. The weights are found
using an iterative algorithm that maximises the average pair-wise codeword distance. The
authors of [61] claim that their algorithm converges to the global optimum in most cases,
although this is not guaranteed. Later in Section 5.4.1, a generalised symbol-wise BF solution
is derived, which contains the algorithm of [61] as a special case. For completeness, the hybrid
subcarrier-wise and symbol-wise BF scheme of [85,86] should also be mentioned. Complexity
and performance can be traded off within the limits of the individual schemes, i.e. the number
of DFTs ranges between one and Mtx at the transmitter and between one and Mrx at the
receiver.
Symbol-wise BF is a special case of subcarrier-wise BF, corresponding to the case when
the same set of weights u and v is used on all N subcarriers. Thus, most expressions from
Section 2.3.1 are still valid for symbol-wise BF, after substituting un = u and v n = v.
Specifically, the expressions for the received signal on subcarrier n, the per-subcarrier SINR
and the mutual information according to Eqs. (2.35), (2.36) and (2.39) simplify to
Yn0 = u† Hn vSn0 + u† Wn , (2.45)

u† Hn vv † H†n u
SINRn (u, v, µn ) = µn SINRep,n (u, v) = µn Ps , (2.46)
u† R W n u
N −1
1 X
I (u, v, µn ) = log2 (1 + SINRn (u, v, µn )) . (2.47)
N
n=0
Applying an IDFT to the frequency-domain expression Eq. (2.45) yields the received signal
at the input of the OFDM demodulator
N −1
1 X 0 j2πk n
y 0 [k] = √ Yn e N
N n=0
N −1
1 X † n
=√ u Hn vSn0 + u† Wn ej2πk N
N n=0
N −1 N −1
1 X † 0
n
j2πk N † 1
X n
= √ u Hn vSn e +u √ Wn ej2πk N
N n=0 N n=0
N −1
1 X † n
=√ u Hn vSn0 ej2πk N + u† w[k]. (2.48)
N n=0
PL−1 n
Substituting the frequency-domain channels Hn = l=0 H l e−j2πl N from Eq. (2.11) into the
previous expression yields
N −1 L−1
!
1 X X n n
y 0 [k] = √ u† H l e−j2πl N vSn0 ej2πk N + u† w[k]
N n=0 l=0
L−1 N −1
!
X
† 1 X 0 j2π(k−l) n
= u H lv √ Sn e N + u† w[k]
l=0
N n=0
L−1
X
= u† H l vs0 [k − l] + u† w[k]
l=0
= u† y[k], (2.49)
where s0 [k] is temporally uncorrelated as Sn0 is uncorrelated across subcarriers. From

Eq. (2.49), it can be seen that each tap of the effective channel is simply the matrix-valued
channel tap H l filtered with the antenna weight vectors u and v. The weight vectors remain
constant during the entire OFDM symbol, giving rise to the term symbol-wise BF.
Compared to subcarrier-wise BF, symbol-wise BF will incur a performance loss due to
the reduced degrees of freedom. Later in Chapter 5, comprehensive analysis and simulations
will show that this loss decreases as the channel becomes more correlated in space or less
frequency-selective. In line with these findings, simulation results also show that the per-
formance gap is comparably small for 60 GHz channels, which typically exhibit high spatial
correlation.
Computational Complexity and Feedback Requirements
A major advantage of symbol-wise BF is that only a single DFT is required per terminal as
shown in Fig. 2.3. Therefore, an (Mtx +Mrx ) /2-fold saving of DFT processors is achieved
relative to subcarrier-wise BF, which needs a dedicated DFT per antenna element (see Sec-
tion 2.3.1). Note that in terms of the DFT complexity, symbol-wise BF is on par with
an OFDM-based single-antenna system. From a computational complexity point of view,
symbol-wise BF is thus highly attractive for 60 GHz communications, where low implementa-
tion cost, processing delay and power consumption impose strict design considerations. The
2.4. Summary 27
detailed analysis of the complexity associated with the computation of u and v is postponed
until Chapter 5. However, it should be mentioned at this point that symbol-wise BF has the
potential to implement low-complexity BF solutions. Recall from Section 2.3.1 that in the
3

case of maxSINRsc BF, O N Mtx operations are required for the computation of N EVDs.
Therefore, complexity reductions are desirable particularly when using large antenna arrays.
In addition to the savings in computational complexity, the required amount of feedback is
reduced by a factor of N . Assuming that the receiver carries out the weight computation, only
one vector v rather than N vectors v n needs to be sent back to the transmitter. Particularly
in systems that use a large number of subcarriers, the feedback reduction is considerable.
Furthermore, weightings may be carried out at the carrier frequency, thereby saving fur-
ther hardware components. If the weights are applied in the digital domain, the signals for
the individual antennas need to be processed by Mtx separate digital-to-analogue converters
(DACs), before being translated to carrier frequency using Mtx separate up-converters. Simi-
larly, the inverse process at the receiver requires Mrx separate down-converters and analogue-
to-digital converters (ADCs). By moving the weighting operation into the analogue domain,
the number of required up/down conversions and DACs/ADCs is cut down to one. Again
using the example of transmit BF, the signal at the carrier frequency is passed through Mtx
separate gain-control and phase-shifter stages, before feeding the individual antenna elements.
2.4 Summary
In this chapter, a general system model for a MIMO communications system was derived. In
order to cope with the time-dispersive nature of 60 GHz channels, OFDM modulation was
adopted. The introduction of this system model was followed by a review of two MIMO sig-
nalling schemes, namely spatial multiplexing and joint transmit and receive BF. Focussing on
the information-theoretic gains of spatial multiplexing, a detailed discussion of the channel ca-
pacity was provided in this chapter. As the ultimate upper bound on the mutual information
of a MIMO channel, the capacity will enable the suitability assessment of 60 GHz channels for
spatial multiplexing in Chapter 4. Furthermore, the concept of spatial multiplexing based on
polarisation diversity as an alternative to spatially separated antenna elements was outlined.
The review in the second part of this chapter, which is dedicated to MIMO BF, commenced
with subcarrier-wise BF, an approach that lends itself extremely well to MIMO-OFDM com-
munications due to a subcarrier-by-subcarrier operation. The corresponding antenna weight
vectors that maximise the mutual information are known from the literature. This solution
will be used extensively in later chapters to assess the performance of other BF schemes.
Finally, the concept of symbol-wise BF was introduced, an approach that has been proposed
in the literature as a low-complexity BF scheme for MIMO-OFDM systems. The complexity
reduction of this scheme stems from the fact that the transmit and receive antenna weight
vectors are kept fixed across all subcarriers. As a result of this OFDM-symbol-wise process-
ing, the BF operations can be shifted into the time domain, thereby reducing the number of
DFTs per terminal to one. Whilst the computational requirements of subcarrier-wise BF are
prohibitive for multi-Gbps mm-wave communications, symbol-wise BF is a highly attractive
candidate. However, the ultimate capabilities of symbol-wise BF are not known as an upper
bound on the corresponding mutual information is not known. The derivation of such a
bound will be the focus of Chapter 5.
Chapter 3
MIMO Channel Model for 60 GHz
Communications
3.1 Introduction
Despite a number of standardisation efforts for 60 GHz communications (e.g. see Section 1.1.3),
a generic channel model for this frequency band is still not available. Part of the reason might
be the extremely site-specific channel behaviour (see Section 3.7.1), which renders a univer-
sal channel description difficult. The most general model currently available is the stochastic
indoor channel model that was developed in the process of the IEEE 802.15.3c standardisa-
tion [39]. The parameters of this model, which is based on the Saleh-Valenzuela clustering
approach, were determined from a set of channel measurements. It was pointed out by TG3c
that the measurement data, which their channel model is based upon, was insufficient to
fully characterise the underlying propagation environments [39] (e.g. many of the NLoS data
sets were obtained from LoS measurements by removing the LoS component). The mea-
surements were taken by sweeping a directional receive antenna through the azimuth plane,
while keeping the (omnidirectional or directional) transmit antenna fixed (see [39] and ref-
erences therein). Limitations arising from this measurement approach include that due to
narrow antenna beamwidths and finite measurement resolution, not all MPC are captured.
Furthermore, propagation characteristics in elevation are not captured. Also note that the
IEEE 802.15.3c channel model cannot be applied to the MIMO case. While it incorporates a
stochastic description of the directions of arrival (DoA), the directions of departure (DoD) are
not modelled [39]. However, a MIMO channel is only fully specified by its double-directional
CIR [87], which takes the spatial characteristics at both terminals into account. The lack of
spatial transmit-side information rules out a straightforward extension of the IEEE 802.15.3c
channel model to the MIMO case.
Recently, there has been quite some activity towards developing a 60 GHz channel model
for the next-generation 802.11ad WLANs (see Section 1.1.3). Two early submissions to the
VHT study group [5, 6] mention the possibility of basing their channel model on the existing
IEEE 802.15.3c model. However, the authors of both documents point out that extensive
measurement data will need to be collected to facilitate an extension and to overcome the
aforementioned limitations of the IEEE 802.15.3c model. Since then, the VHT study group
has been elevated to task group TGad, which is making good progress in the area of channel
modelling. The TGad channel model aims to capture the space-time characteristics of 60 GHz
channels, including azimuth and elevation information at transmitter and receiver to support
30 Chapter 3. MIMO Channel Model for 60 GHz Communications
Physical CM
… Tx Filter Rx Filter …
Analytical CM
Figure 3.1: Physical and analytical channel model.
the use of antenna arrays at both terminals [34]. Similar to IEEE 802.15.3c, TGad is following
a statistical approach with clustering in the time and angular domains. Ray-tracing has
been identified as an adequate approach to determine cluster centres [88]. Analysis of a
large number of ray-tracing simulations will be used to derive the cluster statistics [34]. In
contrast, intra-cluster statistics such as the mean number of rays per cluster, their arrival
rate and power decay will be extracted from measured data [34]. At the time of writing,
TGad’s channel modelling efforts were still ongoing.
Due to the non-availability of a 60 GHz MIMO channel model, a coherent 3-dimensional
(3D) ray-tracing approach was adopted in this thesis. This choice was motivated by the ob-
servation that indirect MPCs experience considerable attenuation at 60 GHz and hence, the
resulting channels do not exhibit rich multipath (see Section 1.1.1). An implication of this
scarce multipath is that it is not necessary to take a large number of MPCs into account to
accurately model the wave propagation between the transmitter and the receiver, rendering
ray-tracing a well-suited approach. Ray-tracing has been utilised for 60 GHz channel mod-
elling in numerous research publications, including [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] and as mentioned
earlier, has also been adopted by TGad to develop an IEEE 802.11ad channel model. In
contrast to the IEEE 802.15.3c channel model, 3D ray-tracing is capable of capturing the
elevation characteristics, as well as the spatial channel properties. The ray-tracing software
was implemented at ITR by the author in collaboration with Dr. Ian Holland.
For the following sections, the distinction between physical and analytical channel model,
which is illustrated in Fig. 3.1, is adopted [89]. The physical channel model captures the basic
propagation mechanisms of electromagnetic waves in a certain environment (represented by
the cloud in Fig. 3.1). Whilst parameters such as the locations of transmitter and receiver,
complex signal amplitude, propagation delay, DoD and DoA are taken into account, the
physical channel model is independent of the antenna configuration and pulse shaping [89].
Incorporating these additional parameters then yields an analytical channel model suitable
for physical layer simulations [89].
The specific physical and analytical channel models used in this thesis are introduced
in Sections 3.2 and 3.3, respectively. After outlining the model validation procedure in
Section 3.4, some OFDM-specific channel model assumptions and challenges are discussed in
Section 3.5. Following this, Section 3.6 describes a typical office-sized target scenario, which
was modelled in the ray-tracing software to generate ensembles of channel realisations. Some
typical characteristics of 60 GHz channels are illustrated in Section 3.7 at the example of the
SISO case. Finally, Section 3.8 introduces a simple stochastic MIMO channel model that will
be used in later chapters to explore the capabilities of different BF schemes under varying
channel conditions.
3.2. Physical Channel Model: 3D Ray–Tracing 31
3.2 Physical Channel Model: 3D Ray–Tracing
Considering an Mtx ×Mrx MIMO channel, the continuous-time double-directional CIR be-
tween the j th transmit antenna element at location rtx,j and the ith receive antenna element
at location rrx,i is defined as [89]
Ai,j (rtx,j , rrx,i , τ, Ωtx , Ωrx ) =

Pi,j
X
Ai,j,p δ(τ − τi,j,p ) δ(Ωtx − Ωtx,i,j,p ) δ(Ωrx − Ωrx,i,j,p ) , (3.1)
p=1
where the variables τ , Ωtx and Ωrx are the propagation delay and the spatial angles1 associated
with the DoD and DoA. Each of the Pi,j MPCs departs from the transmitter in a particular
direction Ωtx,i,j,p and arrives at the receiver from direction Ωrx,i,j,p at propagation delay τi,j,p .
Furthermore, the polarimetric 2×2 matrix [87]
" #
ϑϑ aϑϕ
ai,j,p i,j,p
Ai,j,p = ϕϑ ϕϕ (3.2)
ai,j,p ai,j,p
describes the coupling2 between the ϕ and ϑ polarisations.3 For example, a ϕ-polarised
electromagnetic wave emitted from the transmitter contributes to the ϑ polarisation at the
receiver with channel gain aϕϑ
i,j,p .
In this thesis, the model parameters Ωtx,i,j,p , Ωrx,i,j,p , τi,j,p and Ai,j,p are obtained using
a 3D ray-tracing approach. All rays up to a reflection order of four are traced, applying the
laws of propagation and reflection of electromagnetic waves. Diffraction of rays around edges
and the transmission of waves through surfaces are neglected. Furthermore, all reflections are
assumed to occur from smooth, planar surfaces, i.e. reflections are considered purely specular
without any diffuse components. These idealised and simplifying assumptions are justified
by the tremendous attenuation encountered by 60 GHz signals when penetrating objects or
being reflected, as well as the weak diffraction in this frequency band (see Section 1.1.1).
It is worth mentioning that when compared to measured channel realisations, ray-tracing
tends to underestimate the channel capacity [90]. One reason for the mismatch is that it
is generally impossible to model a realistic propagation environment without simplifications.
For example, reflectors in a real environment have a certain surface roughness and are not
completely planar. Furthermore, additional scatterers such as small objects on desks are
usually ignored when setting up the model representation [90]. As some MPCs and scattered
power cannot be captured by ray-tracing, the simulated channel will not be quite as rich as
the real one. Nevertheless, ray-tracing has been demonstrated to provide a reasonably tight
lower bound on the capacity [90].
In Section 3.2.1, the geometric side of ray-tracing is discussed. Thereafter, the propagation
and reflections of electromagnetic waves are described in Section 3.2.2.
3.2.1 Mirror Image Method
It should be stressed that the ray-tracing problem itself is purely of geometric nature. The
propagation paths between transmitter and receiver are determined by means of the mirror
image method [91] as illustrated in Fig. 3.2. Assume for the moment that we are interested
1
A spatial angle Ω corresponds to a particular point on the unit sphere and is therefore a more compact
representation of the spherical azimuth and elevation angles [87].
2
Note that mutual coupling between pairs of transmit (receive) antenna elements is neglected.
3
A plane wave (far-field assumption) is completely specified by two orthogonal polarisations [89].
Rx
Object A
Image 2
Ob je
ct B
Image 1 Tx
Figure 3.2: Mirror Image Method.
in the path from the transmitter Tx to the receiver Rx, involving a first reflection from
Object A and a second reflection from Object B. Initially, the transmitter is mirrored about
Object A’s limiting surface from which the first reflection occurs, treating the surface as an
infinite plane.4 The resulting Image 1 then takes the role of a source point and is mirrored
about the limiting surface of Object B to obtain Image 2. The propagation path can now be
constructed in reversed order:
1. The second reflection point coincides with the point, where Object B ’s surface is pierced
by a fictive ray launched from Image 2 towards the receiver.
2. Similarly, the reflection point on Object A’s surface is found as the piercing point of a
fictive ray from Image 1 to the previously determined reflection point.
The extension to higher order reflections is straightforward. A final step determines whether
or not the considered path exists by checking for obstruction and if all reflection points lie
within the limits of the corresponding finite-size surface. Whenever this is not the case, the
considered path is irrelevant and does not require any further processing. To find all propaga-
tion paths, the aforementioned procedure needs to be repeated for all possible combinations
of surfaces.
3.2.2 Propagation and Reflections of Electromagnetic Waves
Without loss of generality, assume that the pth propagation path between transmitter j and
receiver i involves only a single reflection. For higher order reflections, the steps described
in the following are repeated accordingly. For brevity of notation, the indices i, j and p are
omitted for the remainder of this section. Let the DoD and DoA of the considered MPC
be described by the spatial angles Ωtx and Ωrx , respectively. Provided that all reflecting
objects are sufficiently far away, the far-field assumption is valid and the propagating wave
is completely specified by two orthogonal electric field (E-field) intensity vectors [87]
E 1 (Ωtx ) = E ϕ (Ωtx ) = kE ϕ keϕ (Ωtx ) , (3.3)

E 2 (Ωtx ) = E ϑ (Ωtx ) = kE ϑ keϑ (Ωtx ) , (3.4)
which are linearly polarised in the ϕ and ϑ (azimuth and elevation) directions of the local
coordinate system at the transmitter. Note that the amplitudes kE ϕ k and kE ϑ k, where k·k
4
The effect of multi-layer surfaces will be accounted for later in Section 3.2.2.
3.2. Physical Channel Model: 3D Ray–Tracing 33
denotes the Euclidean norm, are constant regardless of the particular direction Ωtx , reflecting
isotropic radiation. However, the azimuth and elevation basis vectors eϕ and eϑ , which are
expressed in Cartesian coordinates, change with Ωtx [92].
Let us consider only the ϕ-polarised E-field component E 1 . Ignoring the amplitude at-
tenuation and phase shift associated with propagation for the moment, the E-field intensity
incident at the reflection point is E i,1 = E 1 (Ωtx ). In order to determine the E-field intensity
vector of the reflected wave, E i,1 is decomposed into its parallel and perpendicular compo-
nents Ei,k,1 = E i,1 · ei,k and Ei,⊥,1 = E i,1 · ei,⊥ , where the directions ei,k and ei,⊥ are defined
with respect to the plane of incidence as described in [24]. Then, the E-field intensity vector
of the reflected wave is found as [24]
E r,1 = Ei,k,1 Rk er,k + Ei,⊥,1 R⊥ ei,⊥ , (3.5)
where Rk and R⊥ are the Fresnel reflection coefficients [93] for the parallel and perpendicular
component, respectively, and er,k is the basis vector in the direction of the parallel component
of the reflected field [24]. Note that the reflection coefficients are typically complex-valued
and thus, incorporate both the amplitude attenuation and the phase shift due to reflection.
Their value depends on the angle of incidence and the type of surface material. Rather
than assuming a single air-material interface, reflecting objects are modelled as multi-layer
structures [93].
Finally, the E-field intensity vector E r,1 of the reflected wave is projected onto the ϕ and
ϑ directions at the receiver to obtain
Eϕϕ = β(d)E r,1 · eϕ (Ωrx ) , (3.6)

Eϕϑ = β(d)E r,1 · eϑ (Ωrx ) , (3.7)
where the subscripts ϕ · indicate that the originally emitted wave causing Eϕϕ and Eϕϑ
was ϕ-polarised. Furthermore, β(d) is defined as
“ ”
dLoS −j 2π
d
β(d) = e λc
, (3.8)
d
where d is the path length, dLoS the distance from the transmitter to the receiver5 and λc
the carrier wavelength. The factor β accounts for the free-space path loss and the phase
shift associated with propagation. Note that the amplitude attenuation is defined relative
to the LoS path and that the actual link budget will need to be accounted for later. Whilst
only the ϕ-polarised E-field was considered in the previous discussion, the ϑ-polarised E-field
E 2 according to Eq. (3.4) can be treated analogously, giving rise to the components Eϑϕ
and Eϑϑ at the receiver. The complex channel gains that define the coupling matrix A in
Eq. (3.2) are now obtained as
Eϑϑ Eϑϕ Eϕϑ Eϕϕ

aϑϑ = , aϑϕ = , aϕϑ = , aϕϕ = . (3.9)
kE ϑ k kE ϑ k kE ϕ k kE ϕ k
3.2.3 Extrapolation of Ray–Tracing Results
The computational complexity of the mirror image method can be high, particularly for
geometrical setups with many objects, or when CIRs are required for a large number of
transmitter/receiver positions or antenna elements. However, in some cases, it is not neces-
sary to repeat the ray-tracing procedure for each of the desired CIRs. Based on the fact that
5
Note that in the MIMO case, dLoS is assumed to be the LoS distance averaged over all transmitter/receiver
pairs.
the multipath structure usually changes only slightly over a small distance, it is possible to
extrapolate a CIR obtained by ray-tracing to a near-by location. In [94], for example, ray-
tracing is performed only between the central points of the transmit and receive arrays. Based
on the DoDs and DoAs of the traced MPCs, the displacement of the individual antenna ele-
ments relative to the centre points is then accounted for by correcting the propagation phase.
In [94], the inter-element spacings were assumed to be sufficiently small to neglect changes
of the channel gain amplitudes and the MPC directions. Omitting details, this approach
was generalised to first update the DoDs, angles of incidence at reflectors, DoAs and path
lengths, before correcting the corresponding channel gains and propagation delays. Changes
of the angles of incidence are neglected as they can be expected to have little impact on the
reflection coefficients. Considering that the reflection coefficient is a continuous and rela-
tively smooth function of the angle of incidence, small angular changes due to small antenna
element displacements result in minor changes of the reflection coefficient.
Apart from the savings in computational complexity, channels for different array sizes and
geometries can easily be obtained using this extrapolation approach. One obvious limitation
is that the potential obstruction or birth of MPCs at the new terminal/antenna location is
not taken into account. Inherently, it is assumed that all MPCs of the original CIR (and only
those) still exist and hence, the multipath structure is preserved exactly. This observation
implies that the approach should be used only over small distances, where the likelihood
of changes in the multipath structure is small. For the simulation results presented in this
thesis, extrapolation was used only over distances of at most two wavelengths.
3.3 Analytical Channel Model
This section describes, how an analytical channel model can be obtained from the double-
directional CIR Ai,j (rtx,j , rrx,i , τ, Ωtx , Ωrx ) generated by the ray-tracing routines (see
Eq. (3.1)). In order to obtain the continuous-time CIR, the rays are coherently combined,
taking the antenna patterns and the pulse shaping into account [89].
Let the complex antenna gains for ϑ and ϕ polarisations of the j th transmit antenna be
denoted as Gtx,j,ϑ (Ω) and Gtx,j,ϕ (Ω), and let
T
g tx,j (Ω) = Gtx,j,ϑ (Ω) Gtx,j,ϕ (Ω) . (3.10)
Analogously, the antenna gains Grx,i,ϑ (Ω) and Grx,i,ϕ (Ω) and
T
g rx,i (Ω) = Grx,i,ϑ (Ω) Grx,i,ϕ (Ω) (3.11)
refer to the ith receive antenna. Combining results from [89] and [95], the CIR between
transmit antenna j and receive antenna i is found as
Z
hi,j (τ ) = f τ − τ 0 ·

τ0
Z Z
0 0
gT

tx,j (Ωtx )Ai,j rtx,j , rrx,i , τ , Ωtx , Ωrx g rx,i (Ωrx ) dΩrx dΩtx dτ (3.12)
Ωtx Ωrx
where f (τ ) is the combined impulse response of transmit pulse shaping and the anti-alias
filter at the receiver. Substituting Eq. (3.1) into Eq. (3.12) then yields
Z P
i,j
0
X 0
0
hi,j (τ ) = f τ −τ gT
tx,j (Ωtx,i,j,p )Ai,j,p g rx,i (Ωrx,i,j,p )δ τ − τi,j,p dτ
τ0 p=1
3.4. Model Validation 35
Z P
i,j
0
X
ai,j,p δ τ 0 − τi,j,p dτ 0

= f τ −τ
τ0 p=1
Pi,j
X
= f (τ − τi,j,p ) ai,j,p , (3.13)
p=1
where the sifting property of the Dirac deltas was taken into account. Furthermore, ai,j,p was
introduced as shorthand notation for
ai,j,p = g T
tx,j (Ωtx,i,j,p )Ai,j,p g rx,i (Ωrx,i,j,p ), (3.14)
which is the complex path gain of the pth MPC between the j th transmit and the ith receive
antenna, including the effects of the antenna elements. Note that the design of 60 GHz
antennas is a challenging task. The antennas used in the GLIMMR project are on-chip bond-
wire antennas (see Section 1.1.2). For the sake of generality, ideal half-wavelength dipole
antennas [92] were used instead of specific 60 GHz antennas for the results presented in this
thesis.
3.4 Model Validation
This section includes a brief discussion of the validation procedure for the ray-tracing-based
channel model introduced in Sections 3.2 and 3.3. At the time of writing, accurate 60 GHz
channel sounding equipment was not available. However, some basic measurements were
taken at ITR, using GTC2 (see Section 1.1.2) and a digital phosphor oscilloscope. For the
purpose of validating the channel model, the lab environment within which the measure-
ments were taken, was modelled in the ray-tracing software. Equipment for the measurement
of material permittivities of the lab or the antenna patterns of the on-chip antennas was not
available. Instead, ray-tracing was carried out using permittivities from the literature and
simulated antenna patterns of the bond-wire antennas designed at the University of Adelaide
using Ansoft HFSS. Although a perfect match was not to be expected due to the aforemen-
tioned reasons, measured and simulated CIRs showed a reasonably good agreement, thereby
indicating the validity of the ray-tracing-based channel model. Due to space limitations, the
results are not included in this thesis and the interested reader is referred to [96].
3.5 OFDM Channel Model
In order to obtain a channel model for OFDM physical layer simulations, a sampled version of
the continuous-time CIR hi,j (τ ) in Eq. (3.13) is required. High symbol rates of 1 Gsym/s or
even in excess thereof essentially render oversampling infeasible in mm-wave communications
[23]. Therefore, Baud-rate sampling with one sample per symbol is assumed in the following.
Furthermore, the sampling clocks of the individual transmit chains are assumed to be driven
by the same reference signal, and similarly, the receive chains are also assumed to be time-
locked. Let the sampling instants be given by τ = lTs + ε, where Ts denotes the duration
of the time-domain symbols s (see Eq. (2.7)). Furthermore, ε is the timing offset between
the transmitter and receiver sampling clocks, which is assumed to vary slowly and thus,
remains fixed for at least the duration of one OFDM symbol. Under the assumption that
the transmitter and receiver clocks are not locked, ε is uniformly distributed in the interval
zero to Ts . From Eq. (3.13), the lth tap of the discrete-time CIR between the j th transmit
antenna and ith receive antenna is found as
Pi,j
X
hi,j,l = hi,j (τ ) = f (lTs + ε − τi,j,p ) ai,j,p (3.15)

τ =lTs +ε
p=1
with l ∈ {0, 1, . . . , L−1}, where L−1 corresponds to the last non-zero tap. Note that while
hi,j,l inherently contains the free-space path loss relative to the mean LoS distance dLoS
(see Eq. (3.8)), the link budget still needs to be accounted for. For the simulations results
presented, a link budget of SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB was used. This value was obtained for a
transmit power of 4 mW and a reference distance of d0 = 3 m (see [24] for other system
parameters). The link budget for the mean LoS distance dLoS of a given channel realisation
is then obtained as
d0 2

SNR(dLoS ) = SNR(d0 ) , (3.16)
dLoS
which highlights the squared dependency of the free-space path loss on the link distance [7,
p.28].
Obtaining the lth matrix-valued channel tap H l as it was defined in Section 2.1.2 is now
simply a matter of combining the channel gains hi,j,l for all transmitter/receiver pairs into a
matrix. The channel matrices H l are in turn related to the matrix-valued OFDM subcarrier
channels Hn according to Eq. (2.11). For the simulation results presented, N = 64 OFDM
subcarriers were used. Even though this choice was also motivated by the constraints on
digital processing complexity in practical 60 GHz modems (see Section 1.1), increasing N
beyond this value has a negligible effect on the mutual information results presented in this
thesis. The reason is that multicarrier approaches such as OFDM are capacity-lossless in the
limit N → ∞ (see [66] and comments in Section 2.2.1). Therefore, increasing N beyond a
certain threshold will only result in a negligible increase of the mutual information accuracy.
3.5.1 Filter Design and Effects of Random Sampling
For a complete OFDM channel model, the overall filter response f(τ ) still needs to be spec-
ified. Designing pulse shaping and receive filters for OFDM systems is a non-trivial task.
This section outlines the main challenges, following [97]. In practical OFDM systems, the
simplest approach is to shape each time-domain symbol by a rectangular pulse of width Ts
and unit amplitude, i.e. no pulse shaping is applied in addition to the zero-order hold (ZOH)
response of the DAC. However, the frequency spectrum of this strictly time-limited pulse
has strong side-lobes, causing significant out-of-band interference.6 Even though a filter that
approximates a brick wall in the frequency domain can remove most of this spectral leakage,
an increase in ISI is unavoidable as the filtering leads to a smearing of the symbols in the time
domain. An extension of the CP is the straightforward approach to mitigate the additional
ISI. However, an increased CP length is not desirable as it comes hand-in-hand with a re-
duction in transmission efficiency. The remedy is to employ a filter with an impulse response
that falls off more rapidly, although it is unclear as to how the best trade-off between ISI
increase and out-of-band energy can be achieved.
Typically, a combination of digital and analogue filters are employed. Digital filtering
requires an oversampled signal and hence, is used in conjunction with interpolation at the
6
To reduce spectral leakage in practical OFDM systems, null-subcarriers are typically used at the band
edges. This approach is not considered here as the number of null-subcarrier depends on the specific spectral
mask requirements.
3.5. OFDM Channel Model 37
-1 0 1 2 -1 0 1 2
1 Sampling instant l 1 Sampling instant l
(a) aligned sampling clock (b) sampling offset of ε = 0.6Ts
Figure 3.3: Triangular filtering and effect of sampling offsets.
transmitter and decimation at the receiver (e.g. see [97]). In high-rate mm-wave commu-
nications systems, the Baud-rate constraint rules out the use of digital filtering and as a
result, more care needs to be taken when designing the analogue transmit and receive fil-
ters [23]. What complicates matters even further is that while OFDM systems operating in
rich multipath conditions are relatively insensitive to sampling clock offsets, they cause po-
tentially severe performance degradations in sparse multipath conditions which are common
at 60 GHz [23]. To illustrate the negative effect of timing offsets, a simple filter scenario is
considered in the following example.
Example 3.1
Assume that the transmit pulse has the rectangular shape of the ZOH response and the
receiver employs matched filtering, using a filter with identical response. The resulting
overall filter response f (τ ) is a triangular pulse of width 2Ts and unit amplitude.
Fig. 3.3 shows the pulses f (τ ) centred around the sampling instants along with the
magnitudes of the first few MPCs of a typical 60 GHz SISO channel realisation. In
Fig. 3.3(a), the sampling clock was aligned with the first-arriving MPC, i.e. τ =
lTs + minp τp . Even though this alignment is generally suboptimal, it ensures that
the first MPC contributes to the discrete-time CIR with its full strength. Given the
high propagation and reflection attenuation of 60 GHz signals, the first component is
in fact often one of the strongest (even in NLoS situations). With random sampling
on the other hand, the strong MPCs are less likely to coincide with the peaks of the
pulse train and are therefore scaled down. This is shown in Fig. 3.3(b) for an offset
of ε = 0.6Ts .
For a typical ensemble of 60 GHz SISO-OFDM channels with NLoS conditions, the per-
formance in terms of mutual information is shown in Fig. 3.4(a) for fixed timing or random
sampling offsets and different filter types.7 For the triangular filter response, the results
show a better performance when the sampling clock is aligned with the first-arriving MPC
of each realisation. In practice, the loss incurred by random sampling offsets is unavoidable.
As shown in Fig. 3.4(b), the effect is even more pronounced in the LoS case, where the LoS
component is typically much stronger than the later-arriving indirect MPCs. In both figures,
results are also shown for a raised-cosine filter [98, p.546] with rolloff 0.3, truncated after
7
The results in Fig. 3.4 were obtained using the PartOff B channel ensemble according to Section 3.6.
1 1
Aligned sampling
Aligned sampling Random sampling
0.9 Random sampling 0.9
0.8 0.8
0.7 0.7
P (I > Abcissa)
P (I > Abcissa)
0.6 0.6
Raised-
0.5 Cosine 0.5
0.4 Triangular 0.4
0.3 0.3
0.2 0.2 Raised-

Cosine
0.1 0.1 Triangular
0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Spectral Efficiency [bps/Hz] Spectral Efficiency [bps/Hz]
(a) NLoS (b) LoS
Figure 3.4: Effect of random sampling offsets on the capacity of typical 60 GHz SISO-OFDM chan-
nels.
six symbol periods on either side of the central peak. Not only is this filter much less sensi-
tive against random timing offsets, but also achieves higher spectral efficiencies. In [23], the
capacity of OFDM-based communications systems was optimised using standard analogue
filter approximations such as Butterworth or elliptic filters. However, as the optimal filter
type remains unknown and the optimisation process depends on certain system parameters
such as the number of subcarriers, this approach will not be followed in this thesis. Without
claiming optimality, the aforementioned raised-cosine filter will be used for all 60 GHz simu-
lation results presented in the following. Furthermore, random sampling will be considered
exclusively. As only SISO results were presented in this section, it is worth mentioning that
analogous observations were made in the MIMO case. Consistent use of the raised-cosine
filter will therefore ensure performance results to scale equally, regardless of the size of the
antenna arrays.
3.6 Partitioned Office Scenario
The target propagation environments that were modelled in the ray-tracing software to gen-
erate ensembles of channel realisations are depicted in Fig. 3.5. The room dimensions of these
partitioned office scenarios are 7×6×2.7 m3 (length×width×height). In the first scenario in
Fig. 3.5(a), which will henceforth be referred to as PartOff A, two chipboard panels (2 m
wide, 1.9 m high) partition the office into four equal-size sections with a wooden desk (1.9 m
wide, 0.9 m long) and a metal filing cabinet in each. As mentioned in Section 3.2.2, walls
and other objects are modelled as dielectric multi-layers. Table 3.1 gives an overview of the
object and material properties, along with the corresponding literature references. Objects
such as the metal filing cabinets for which the number of layers and the thickness are not
specified are assumed to be solid, i.e. there is only a single air-material interface. Further-
more, the floor is assumed to be covered with carpet, which is modelled by the reflection
coefficients Rk = R⊥ = −0.25 (independent of the angle of incidence) as proposed in [99].
While the dimensions and materials of the second scenario PartOff B in Fig. 3.5(b) are iden-
3.6. Partitioned Office Scenario 39
Table 3.1: Object and material properties of the partitioned office.
Object Layers Material Thickness Permittivity Reference

[mm] Re {·} Im {·}
Walls 3 Plasterboard 12 2.4964 −0.0316 [93]
Air gap 2 1 0
Concrete 30 6.4955 −0.4279 [93]
Partition walls 1 Chipboard 30 2.86 −0.159 [100]
Ceiling 3 Painted surface 1 2 0 [93]
Rock-wool 8.7 1.5876 −0.0126 [93]
Plasterboard 9 3.0271 −0.08 [93]
Floor Carpet — modelled by const. refl. coeff. −0.25 [99]
Desks 1 Wood 20 1.57 −0.0964 [100]
Door 1 Wood 37 1.57 −0.0964 [100]
Windows 1 Glass 6.8 5.29 −0.2539 [100]
Filing Cabinets Metal 1 −106 [101]
White Board Metal 1 −106 [101]
Persons modelled as fully absorbing
Partitions Whiteboard
Windows
Filing Cabinets
2 3
1 4
Desks Desks
Door
Filing Cabinets
(a) PartOff A
Tx1
Tx2
(b) PartOff B
Figure 3.5: Partitioned office scenario: geometrical setup for the ray-tracing simulation.
tical to those of PartOff A, two additional partition walls and two persons were included in
this scenario. For simplicity, the persons are modelled as fully-absorbing cuboidal structures.
This scenario is more challenging for the deployment of 60 GHz radios as the persons and
additional partitions increase the chance of an obstructed LoS path.
Table 3.2: Transmission scenarios within PartOff A and PartOff B.
Room Transmission scenario Channel Tx location Rx locations

PartOff A single-desk LoS Desk 1 899 grid points on Desk 1
desk-to-desk LoS Desk 1 525 grid points on Desk 2
PartOff B AP-to-desk LoS+NLoS Tx1 144 grid points per desk
handheld device-to-desk LoS+NLoS Tx2 144 grid points per desk
Within PartOff A and B, the four different transmission scenarios that are listed in Ta-
ble 3.2 are considered. In the PartOff A single-desk scenario, LoS transmission occurs between
two terminals on Desk 1, each having a laptop-typical antenna (array) height of 0.25 m above
the desk. The transmitter is placed in the centre of the front half of the desk (with respect
to Fig. 3.5(a)), whereas the receiver is moved to all points of a regular grid occupying the
other half of the desk. The LoS distance averaged across all channel realisations is approxi-
mately 1 m. In contrast, the grid of receiver positions extends over the entire Desk 2 in the
desk-to-desk scenario, resulting in a mean LoS distance of about 5.1 m.
Within PartOff B, two different transmitter locations are considered as shown in
Fig. 3.5(b): Tx1 is mounted 0.1 m below the ceiling in the room centre (square marker)
and Tx2 is placed 0.5 m in front of the door at a height of 1.2 m (circular marker). For
example, Tx1 could be a ceiling-mounted access point and Tx2 a handheld device carried
by a person. The receiver is moved to all points of the regular grids that are located 0.25 m
above each of the four desks (dot markers). This scenario is quite challenging for 60 GHz
communications: for example, the LoS component is obstructed at 432 of the 576 receiver
locations (75%) when transmission occurs from Tx1.
The channel ensembles used in this thesis were obtained for antenna arrays of various
sizes and geometries with ideal half-wavelength dipole elements. Unless stated otherwise,
the dipoles were aligned vertically and spaced one wavelength apart. PartOff B channels
were generated using transmitter location Tx1 unless it is specifically mentioned that Tx2
was used. Furthermore, the PartOff B ensembles were obtained using three i.i.d. uniform
azimuth rotations of the antenna arrays per grid position, resulting in a total number of 1728
channel realisations.
3.7 Numerical Results for SISO Channels
Before embarking on the investigation of MIMO channels in later chapters, this section focuses
on the SISO case. The results in Section 3.7.1 are to be understood as illustration of typical
effects at 60 GHz rather than an attempt of a complete channel characterisation. The char-
acterisation of 60 GHz channels is a topic in its own right and contributions have been made
through numerous research publications, including [21, 102, 103, 104, 105, 100, 93, 106, 11, 19].
Section 3.7.2 provides a detailed discussion of the spatial correlation properties in the 60 GHz
band.
3.7.1 Typical Behaviour of 60 GHz Channels
The magnitude of typical continuous-time CIRs with LoS and NLoS conditions are shown in
Figs. 3.6(a) and (b). It can be seen that neither of these channels exhibits rich multipath:
the CIRs are dominated by a small number of strong MPCs and their times of arrival are
sparsely distributed. Specifically, the CIR in Fig. 3.6(a) highlights that compared to the
LoS component, most indirect MPCs are severely attenuated. These observations are in line
3.7. Numerical Results for SISO Channels 41
1.6
1.4
1.2

SNR h(τ )

1

0.8
0.6
√
0.4
0.2
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
τ [ns]
(a) LoS
0.5
0.4

SNR h(τ )

0.3

0.2
√
0.1
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
τ [ns]
(b) NLoS
Figure 3.6: Typical 60 GHz channel impulse responses.
with the discussions in Section 1.1.1 and can be attributed to exceptionally high path and
reflection losses. Furthermore, the CIRs in Fig. 3.6 reveal a temporal clustering of MPCs. Due
to this effect, cluster-based channel models such as the Saleh-Valenzuela model are usually
considered suitable to capture the propagation effects at 60 GHz [39, 5, 6] (also see discussion
in Section 3.1).
The top row of Fig. 3.7 shows the interpolated 2D fading maps corresponding to two
different 10λc × 10λc grids of receiver positions with d = λc /8 grid point spacing. The
locations of these grids within PartOff B were chosen such that all grid points have either
(a) LoS or (d) NLoS conditions. The fading maps show the normalised squared channel
magnitude on the central subcarrier in dB.8 It can be seen that both maps exhibit a fairly
regular interference pattern. Interestingly, this is not only the case in LoS situations with
a strong direct path, but also when the LoS component is obstructed. To illustrate that
this regularity is caused by a small number of strong MPCs, the middle (bottom) row of
Fig. 3.7 shows a set of fading maps that were obtained using only the two (three) strongest
MPCs. Whilst two MPCs give only a crude approximation of the top plots, the interference
patterns with three MPCs already resemble a strong similarity. Later in Section 3.7.2, it
8
Before conversion into the logarithmic domain, the squared channel magnitudes were normalised such that
the average across all grid points is unity. Similar plots are obtained for other subcarriers.
-30 -20 -10 0 10 -30 -20 -10 0 10

[dB] [dB]
10 10
Cross-range ∆i d [wavelengths]
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Range ∆j d [wavelengths] Range ∆j d [wavelengths]
(a) LoS (d) NLoS
10 10
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
(b) LoS, 2 strongest MPCs (e) NLoS, 2 strongest MPCs
10 10
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
(c) LoS, 3 strongest MPCs (f ) NLoS, 3 strongest MPCs
Figure 3.7: Fading maps for LoS and NLoS channels on the centre subcarrier and their approxima-
tion by the dominant MPCs.
will be shown that the behaviour of the spatial correlation function is dictated by these few
MPCs. The fact that the channel properties are primarily dictated by a few MPCs implies
an extremely site-specific behaviour: strengths, phases and directions of the dominant MPCs
strongly depend on the terminal locations within the propagation environment.
Commonly, the RMS delay spread is used as a measure of the time dispersiveness of a
given multipath channel [62], i.e. it quantifies the severity of the multipath propagation. The
12
10
τrms [ns]
6
2 LoS
NLoS
0
2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
dLoS [m]
Figure 3.8: Typical 60 GHz channel impulse responses.
RMS delay spread τrms is defined as [62]

v
uP
u p |ap |2 (τp − τ1 )
P 2 2
p |ap | (τp − τ1 )
τrms = t P 2
− P 2
, (3.17)
p |ap | p |ap |
where τp and ap are the propagation delay and complex channel gain of the pth MPC as
defined in Eqs. (3.1) and (3.14). Note that τrms is defined in terms of excess delays, i.e.
relative to the delay τ1 of the first-arriving MPC.
With RMS delay spreads of only a few nanoseconds (e.g. see [105,104,102,103]), 60 GHz are
considerably less time-dispersive than channels at lower frequencies. For example, comparison
of 2 GHz and 60 GHz channel measurements taken in the same environment has shown the
RMS delay spread to be approximately twice as large in the lower frequency band [103].
Fig. 3.8 shows a scatter plot of τrms versus the separation distance of transmitter and receiver
for the PartOff B channel ensemble (see Section 3.6). Each point corresponds to one channel
realisation, and the diamond and cross markers indicate LoS or NLoS conditions. The RMS
delay spread averaged across all realisations is approximately 6.2 ns. In comparison to Fig. 3.8,
the 60 GHz RMS delay spread values reported in [103] tend to be slightly larger. However,
this can be attributed to the fact that the corresponding measurements were taken in an
environment larger and more reflective than PartOff B. Furthermore, comparison of ray-
tracing and measurements in [21] have indicated ray-tracing to slightly underestimate RMS
delay spreads. Fig. 3.8 also shows that LoS and NLoS conditions in the considered PartOff
B scenario typically lead to similar values of the RMS delay spread, i.e. NLoS channels do
not necessarily exhibit richer multipath than LoS channels. This observation is yet another
indicator for the tremendous attenuation of indirect MPCs at mm-wave frequencies.
3.7.2 Spatial Correlation
As already pointed out in Section 1.2.1, spatial correlation is known to reduce the capacity of
MIMO channels [54, 53] and thus, is a critical factor for the performance of a MIMO system.
In the extreme case of full correlation, the MIMO capacity reverts to that of a SISO channel.
While the spatial correlation properties of frequency-flat channels are well understood and
in the case of Rayleigh fading, can be described by a Bessel function of the first kind and
order zero [107], this is not the case for frequency-selective 60 GHz channels. Due to non-rich
multipath propagation at 60 GHz, the spatial correlation can be expected to be relatively
range j
rrx,1,1 rrx,1,2 rrx,1,M
… …
rrx,2,1
… …
cross- … …
range i
…
…
…
…
rtx
(virtual) LoS path
…
…
…
rrx,M,1 rrx,M,M
… …
d
Figure 3.9: Grid of receiver positions with range and cross-range directions.
high. Numerical results presented in this section will quantify the correlation as a function
of antenna separation.
The estimation of the spatial correlation function is based on the correlation coefficient
between two complex random variables x and y, which is given by [107]
E{xy ∗ } − E{x} E{y}∗

ρ (x, y) = , (3.18)
σx σy
where σx and σy denote the standard deviation of x and y. Following the approach of [107], the
complex correlation function is estimated for both range and cross-range directions (relative
to the LoS direction). To this end, ray-tracing simulations were carried out between a single-
antenna transmitter at a fixed location rtx and a single-antenna receiver placed on all points
rrx,i,j of a regular M ×M grid with grid point spacing d as depicted in Fig. 3.9. The grid
is aligned such that its rows are parallel (range direction) and its columns are orthogonal
(cross-range direction) to the LoS path or, in case of obstruction, the virtual LoS path. Let
Hn (rrx,i,j ) be the scalar channel coefficient on subcarrier n for the receiver location at the
ith cross-range and the j th range position. Since the transmitter position rtx is constant, it
was omitted in the argument of Hn . By carrying out the expectations in Eq. (3.18) across
subcarriers, the range correlation at a given range distance ∆j d from reference point rrx,i,j is
found as

ρ (∆j d) = ρ Hn (rrx,i,j ) , Hn rrx,i,j+∆j , (3.19)

∆j d = rrx,i,j+∆j − rrx,i,j , (3.20)
where 1−j 6 ∆j 6 M −j is the range index offset relative to the reference point. This
corresponds to computing the spatial correlation function for each row of the grid. In a
second step, taking the average across all rows yields
M
1 X
ρ (∆j d) = ρ Hn (rrx,i,j ) , Hn rrx,i,j+∆j . (3.21)
M
i=1
In analogous manner, the cross-range correlation is obtained by averaging across the spatial
correlation functions of the individual columns.
Fig. 3.10 shows the fading map for a 10λc × 10λc grid of receiver positions with d = λc /8
grid point spacing and LoS conditions (for details, see Section 3.7.1). Two main components
can be identified: one set of peaks and troughs is almost aligned with the vertical axis, whereas
the second set occurs on a diagonal that is rotated against the horizontal axis by about 30◦
in clockwise direction. It was shown in Section 3.7.1 that this regular structure is primarily
[dB]
5 5 10
Cross-range ∆i d [wavelengths] 2.5 2.5 0
-5
0 0 -10
-15
-2.5 -2.5 -20
-25
-5 -5 -30
0 0.5 1 -5 -2.5 0 2.5 5

ρ (∆i d)
1

ρ (∆j d)
0.5

0
-5 -2.5 0 2.5 5
Range ∆j d [wavelengths]
Figure 3.10: Fading map and spatial correlation function for 60 GHz LoS channel.
caused by a small number of significant MPCs. These few MPCs also dictate the behaviour of
the spatial correlation function and lead to extremely high correlation. The absolute values
of the cross-range and range correlation function, which are plotted on the left side and
below the fading map, reveal that the correlation falls off only slowly. When computing the
correlation, the central point of each row/column was used as the reference point (i.e. i = M/2
or j = M/2), and it can be seen that the correlation function is approximately symmetric
for negative and positive spacings. Interestingly, the oscillations of the correlation function
in range direction are much more rapid than in cross-range direction. This can be attributed
to the fact that the rate at which peaks and troughs are encountered when moving in range
direction is much higher. Fig. 3.10 shows that the periodicity of both correlation functions
matches that of the interference pattern in the corresponding direction. These results show
that the spatial correlation properties are highly dependent on the antenna array orientation.
Generally, the orientation with the lowest correlation will not coincide with the range or
cross-range direction. Rather, it is determined by the directions of the dominant MPCs at
the location of interest.
Range and cross-range correlation for typical 60 GHz channels with or without LoS con-
ditions over larger distances are shown in Fig. 3.11. For these results, the reference points
were chosen at the edges of a 40λc × 40λc grid, i.e. at i = 1 or j = 1. A channel is usually
considered sufficiently decorrelated once the correlation function remains below 0.5 [107]. It
can be seen that even at large distances of up to 40λc , or equivalently, 20 cm, the correlation
coefficient is still around, or even above this critical value. Due to the presence of a dominant
direct path, the oscillations of the correlation function in the LoS case are less pronounced
than in the NLoS case, where local minima tend to be lower. In contrast to these results,
the spatial correlation function at lower carrier frequencies falls off much more quickly. For
example, it typically drops below 0.5 within 10 cm from the reference point for ultrawideband
(UWB) channels in the frequency band 3.1 to 10.6 GHz [107].
1 1
0.8 0.8

ρ (∆j d)

ρ (∆j d)
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
∆j d [cm] ∆j d [cm]
(a) Range direction, LoS (b) Range direction, NLoS
1 1
0.8 0.8

ρ (∆i d)

ρ (∆i d)
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
∆i d [cm] ∆i d [cm]
(c) Cross-range direction, LoS (d) Cross-range direction, NLoS
Figure 3.11: Spatial correlation function for 60 GHz channels.
The results in this section have shown that spatial correlation is extremely high at 60 GHz
and that antenna spacings in excess of 20 cm are required to achieve any considerable decorre-
lation. Whilst such spacings might be feasible in devices such as access points or laptops, they
are clearly too large for small handheld devices. Therefore, 60 GHz channels can be expected
to offer only small multiplexing gains, which will be confirmed by results in Chapter 4.
3.8 Kronecker Correlation Model
The aim of this section is to derive a simple but general stochastic MIMO channel model that
captures the effects of frequency-selectivity, as well as spatial correlation. This model will
prove useful when investigating the performance of different BF techniques under varying
channel conditions. Note that the stochastic channel model is not specifically aimed at
describing the 60 GHz MIMO channel. As pointed out in the previous sections of this chapter,
this is a highly challenging task due to the extremely site-specific channel characteristics at
60 GHz. However, both channel models have their own justification. While the ray-tracing
model captures the behaviour of 60 GHz channels, a major advantage of the stochastic model
is that channel characteristics such as the degree of frequency-selectivity or spatial correlation
can easily be controlled by the model parameters.
The derivations in the following are based on the Kronecker correlation model [60].9 The
9
Note that the Kronecker correlation model was demonstrated to potentially suffer from deficiencies in
accurately capturing the channel properties in certain situations (e.g. when using large numbers of antennas
[108]). However, it is still widely used in the literature due to its simplicity and tractability. Moreover, in
the context of this thesis, the Kronecker model is not used to characterise a particular channel and thus, the
model limitations do not play such an important role.
3.8. Kronecker Correlation Model 47
Table 3.3: Parameters of the Kronecker correlation channel model.
Parameter Description
σl2 average power delay profile
ϕDoD,l mean directions of departure (DoD)
ϕDoA,l mean directions of arrival (DoA)
dtx inter-element spacing of the transmit antenna array (in multiples of λc )
drx inter-element spacing of the receive antenna array (in multiples of λc )
ρtx,l spatial transmit correlation parameters
ρrx,l spatial receive correlation parameters
underlying assumption of the Kronecker model is that the transmit and receive correlation
are separable, i.e. the receive correlation does not depend on the particular choice of trans-
mit antenna and vice versa. The channel matrices H l , which are assumed to be mutually
uncorrelated, follow a multivariate complex Gaussian distribution
H l ∼ CN (0Mrx ×Mtx , Rl ) , (3.22)
whose mean is given by the all-zero matrix 0Mrx ×Mtx with Mrx rows and Mtx columns, and
whose correlation matrix is given by10
n o
Rl = EH l vec(H l ) vec(H l )† = σl2 Rtx,l ⊗ Rrx,l . (3.23)
In Eq. (3.23), vec(X) denotes the operation that stacks the columns of a (p×q) matrix X into
a (pq×1) vector, and ⊗ represents the Kronecker product. Furthermore, Rtx,l ∈ CMtx ×Mtx
and Rrx,l ∈ CMrx ×Mrx are the transmit and receive correlation matrices, respectively, and σl2
denotes the average power delay profile (PDP) with
L−1
X
σl2 = 1. (3.24)
l=0
Note that the right-hand side of Eq. (3.23) clearly reflects the separability of transmit and
receive correlation. A channel realisation with the aforementioned statistical properties can
be synthesised as [109]
1/2 T /2
H l = σl Rrx,l Gl Rtx,l , (3.25)
where X 1/2 denotes any matrix square root fulfilling X = X 1/2 X †/2 (e.g. see [109]), and the
entries of Gl are i.i.d. CN (0, 1).
The Kronecker-type channel model used in this thesis is derived in Section A.2. It is
completely specified by the parameters listed in Table 3.3 and the (i, j)th entries of the
correlation matrices Rtx,l and Rrx,l are given by
|j−i|
Rtx,l i,j = ρtx,l e−j2π sin(ϕDoD,l )dtx (i−j) ,

(3.26)
|j−i|
Rrx,l i,j = ρrx,l e−j2π sin(ϕDoA,l )drx (i−j) .

(3.27)
Note that the derivations assume uniform linear arrays11 and follow [110] in assuming expo-
nentially decaying spatial correlation. The level of spatial transmit and receive correlation
10
Note that in the SIMO case, the term Rtx,l ⊗Rrx,l in Eq. (3.23) simplifies to 1⊗Rrx,l = Rrx,l . Analogously,
it simplifies to Rtx,l in the MISO case.
11
The generalisation to other array geometries is straightforward.
is determined by the parameters ρtx,l and ρrx,l , which take on values between zero (no cor-
relation) and one (full correlation). Note that in the uncorrelated case, the mean DoDs and
DoAs do not affect the correlation matrices.
One simple assumption is that all channel taps have the same spatial correlation proper-
ties, i.e. Rl = R for all l. From Eq. (3.23), it can be seen that Rl becomes independent of l
only if Rtx,l and Rrx,l are constant across all channel taps. For the transmit correlation ma-
trix Rtx,l in Eq. (3.26), for example, this is the case if ρtx,l and ϕDoD,l do not depend on l (and
similarly for Rrx,l ). Particularly the assumption of the mean DoDs and DoAs being constant
across all taps is rather unrealistic. Nevertheless, the assumption of the correlation matrices
not depending on l has often been used in the literature (e.g. see [75,111,10]). One advantage
of this assumption is that frequency and time domain channels have the same correlation ma-
trices [75], which can greatly simplify analysis. To see this, consider the correlation between
subcarriers n and n0 given by
n o
Rn,n0 = E vec(Hn ) vec(Hn0 )†
L−1
X L−1 0 n0
n o n
E vec(H l ) vec(H l0 )† e−j2πl N ej2πl N
X
=
l=0 l0 =0 | {z }
Rl δl,l0
L−1
X n−n0
= Rl e−j2πl N , (3.28)
l=0
where in the first step, Hn was replaced by its DFT expression according to Eq. (2.11) and
where in the second step, it was taken into account that H l is uncorrelated across channel
taps. From Eq. (3.28), it can be seen that the correlation matrix Rn,n for a particular
subcarrier n is just the unweighted sum of the time-domain correlation matrices Rl . With
Rl = R, Eq. (3.28) yields Rn,n ∝ R. Furthermore, Eq. (3.28) shows that even if Rl has unit
rank for all l, the resulting frequency-domain correlation matrices can still have a rank larger
than one. In other words, full correlation on all channel taps H l does not necessarily equate
to full correlation of the subcarrier channels Hn .
A number of Kronecker channel models that are used throughout this thesis are listed in
Table 3.4. The rightmost column of this table contains a cross-reference to the section(s),
where the individual models are used. Furthermore, U(a, b) denotes a uniform distribution
in the interval [a, b]. For simplicity, all models in Table 3.4 assume a constant correlation
level for all taps, i.e. ρtx,l = ρtx and ρrx,l = ρrx . Furthermore, an inter-element spacing of
dtx = drx = 0.5 is used. Model Kron A corresponds to the special case, where the DoDs and
DoAs are fixed across all channel taps and thus, the fully correlated time-domain channels
also give rise to fully correlated subcarrier channels (see Eq. (3.28)). Two different PDPs
are considered, a uniform and an exponentially decaying PDP. The uniform PDP can be
described as
(
1
, for 0 6 l < L
σl2 = L (3.29)
0, for l > L
and the exponential PDP is given by
−1/Kσ
(
1−e
e−l/Kσ , for 0 6 l < L
σl2 = 1−e−L/Kσ (3.30)
0, for l > L,
where Kσ characterises the rate at which σl2 decays. This parameter is loosely related to the
RMS delay spread [112]. Note that the frequency-flat channel is covered as a special case for
Kσ = 0.
3.9. Summary 49
Table 3.4: Channel models with Kronecker correlation.
Model Type L PDP Kσ ρtx ρrx ϕDoD,l ϕDoA,l Section

Kron A MIMO L arbitr. 1 1 0 0 5.1, 5.5.1
◦ ◦ ◦ ◦
Kron B MIMO 2 unif. ρ ρ U(−30 , 30 ) U(−30 , 30 ) 5.5.1, 5.5.3
Kron C SIMO 2 unif. ρ ρ U(60◦ , 120◦ ) 5.5.3
Kron D MIMO 12 exp. Kσ 0 0 U(0◦ , 360◦ ) U(0◦ , 360◦ ) 5.5.2, 6.1.2
Kron E MIMO 12 exp. 2Ts 0.9 0 U(−30◦ , 30◦ ) U(0◦ , 360◦ ) 6.2.3
Kron F MIMO 12 exp. 2Ts 0 0.9 U(0◦ , 360◦ ) U(−30◦ , 30◦ ) 6.2.3
3.9 Summary
The channel modelling review at the beginning of this chapter has underlined the lack of a
generic 60 GHz channel model for MIMO communications. To remedy this situation, exten-
sive channel measurements and statistical analysis will be required. For the purpose of this
thesis, the double-direction CIR that describes the spatio-temporal characteristics of 60 GHz
MIMO channels was derived by means of a 3D ray-tracing approach. By taking the antenna
characteristics and the effects of filtering and sampling into account, a discrete-time channel
model was then obtained. In this context, some of the challenges arising from Baud-rate
sampling in low-complexity OFDM-based mm-wave receivers were discussed. Specifically,
digital filtering cannot be employed due to the non-availability of oversampled transmit and
receive signals. As a result, the analogue filters need to be designed carefully in order to keep
the negative effects of random sampling clock offsets on the system performance at a low
level. In practical systems, the optimal filters need to be specifically designed for the given
set of system parameters. To keep the results presented in this thesis general, a raised-cosine
filter with 0.3 roll-off was chosen. This filter was demonstrated to be comparably insensitive
to random timing offsets.
Following the description of a partitioned office scenario, which was implemented in the
ray-tracing software to generate ensembles of 60 GHz channel realisations, some typical chan-
nel characteristics were discussed at the example of a SISO link. These results confirmed the
non-rich multipath propagation and the small RMS delay spreads on the order of nanosec-
onds that have been reported in the literature. Furthermore, results clearly showed that the
channel behaviour is typically dominated by a small number of strong MPCs. Specifically, it
was possible to link the behaviour of the spatial correlation function to these few MPCs. The
resulting spatial correlation was found to be significantly higher than at lower frequencies
and even at distances as large as 40λc (20 cm), correlation coefficients well in excess of 0.5
were encountered. Interestingly, the spatial correlation of LoS and NLoS channels was found
to be similar, indicating similar levels of multipath sparsity in both cases.
This chapter was concluded with the derivation of a stochastic MIMO channel model with
separable transmit and receive correlation (Kronecker assumption). Whilst this simple and
general model is not specifically tailored to the 60 GHz channel, it will prove useful in later
chapters to explore the capabilities of different multi-antenna techniques under varying levels
of spatial correlation and frequency selectivity.
Chapter 4
Spatial Multiplexing
Results in Section 3.7.2 showed that the spatial correlation is typically high in the 60 GHz
band. As a result, 60 GHz channels can be expected to be far from ideal for SM, a technique
that relies on low spatial correlation (see Section 2.2). Ultimately, the suitability of a channel
for OFDM-based SM is determined by the eigenvalues of Hn H†n . The best-case channel
corresponds to the case where for a given subcarrier n, all eigenvalues λn,m are identical. If
this is the case for all subcarriers, λn,m = λn,1 for m = 1, . . . , rank(Hn ), where rank(Hn ) =
min{Mtx , Mrx }. Consequently, the MIMO capacity according to Eq. (2.25) simplifies to1
N −1 min{M tx ,Mrx }
1 X X SNR
Cep = log2 1 + λn,1
N Mtx
n=0 m=1
N −1
1 X SNR
= min{Mtx , Mrx } log2 1 + λn,1 , (4.1)
N Mtx
n=0
which illustrates the celebrated linear scaling of the MIMO capacity with the number of
antennas in the high SNR regime [48, 47]. In contrast, the multiplexing gain can be expected
to be much smaller when the eigenvalue spread is large.2
This chapter aims to shed some light on what amount of multiplexing gain 60 GHz chan-
nels typically offer, considering antenna arrays with spatially separated elements in Section 4.1
and polarisation-diversity-based SM in Section 4.2.
4.1 Spatially Separated Antennas
Conventionally, antenna arrays with spatially separated antenna elements are used in MIMO
communications. As a general rule of thumb, SM benefits from increased antenna spacing
due to reduced levels of spatial correlation. This section will address the question whether
practical antenna spacings are sufficient to obtain any significant amount of multiplexing
gain over 60 GHz channels. Exclusively ideal dipole antennas with vertical alignment are
considered in this section.
Fig. 4.1 shows the complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDF) of the mu-
tual information for an ensemble of 2×2 PartOff B channels (see Section 3.6) with 20λc
1
Analogous observations can be made for the WF capacity Cwf in Eq. (2.26).
2
Even in cases with large eigenvalue spread, the capacity might still scale linearly (e.g. under certain
correlated channel models [113]), but the growth rate is smaller than in the identical eigenvalue case.
52 Chapter 4. Spatial Multiplexing
antenna spacing. While the results in the top row were obtained using both LoS and NLoS
realisations, the rows below show NLoS-only and LoS-only results.3 Results are included
for SM with or without WF (MIMO WF/EP, see Section 2.2) and optimal subcarrier-wise
BF with WF (maxSINRsc WF, see Section 2.3.1). Furthermore, the performance of a SISO
system using an EP allocation is shown as a reference. First, let us consider Fig. 4.1(a). For
the given channel ensemble, the curve labelled MIMO WF represents the upper performance
limit (recall from Section 2.2.1 that the WF capacity Cwf corresponds to the case, where
the transmitter perfectly knows the channel). The relative performance loss of MIMO EP
can be explained by the fact that due to the uniform power allocation, transmit power is
wasted on weak eigenmodes. On the contrary, the WF algorithm allocates less power to
weak eigenmodes and distributes the excess power among the stronger ones. Interestingly,
Fig. 4.1(a) also reveals that maxSINRsc BF with WF almost achieves the upper performance
bound. Particularly for probabilities greater than 0.7, the curves for maxSINRsc and MIMO
with WF virtually coincide.4 This observation is in line with the exceptionally high spatial
correlation of 60 GHz channels reported in Section 3.7.2. It has been noted that BF actually
benefits from such high levels of spatial correlation (see discussion about the optimality of
subcarrier-wise BF at the end of Section 2.3.1). For the NLoS case, similar observations can
be made from Fig. 4.1(b), where the performance gap between MIMO WF and maxSINRsc
WF is even a fraction smaller. The similarity of the results for the mixed ensemble and the
NLoS ensemble can be attributed to the fact that 75% of the channel realisations have NLoS
conditions. On the other hand, a slightly increased gap can be seen in Fig. 4.1(c) for the
LoS case. The following results demonstrate that this increase is primarily caused by higher
received signal levels due to the presence of a LoS component, rather than by a significant
change of the eigenvalue profile.
The eigenvalue profile of the aforementioned channel ensembles is illustrated in Fig. 4.2
by plotting the histogram hist(λn,2 /λn,1 ), where λn,2 /λn,1 is the ratio of the second to the
largest eigenvalue on subcarrier n and where the area under the the histogram is normalised
to unity. Noting that 0 6 λn,2 /λn,1 6 1 as a result of λn,2 6 λn,1 , values close to one imply
high multiplexing gain. Fig. 4.2 shows that the ratio stays well below unity for the majority
of channels, indicating a considerably weaker second eigenmode. Due to the larger percent-
age of NLoS realisations, the histograms for the mixed ensemble and the NLoS realisations
resemble strong similarity. Interestingly, the histogram for the LoS case5 hints at slightly
more favourable conditions for SM. Whilst LoS conditions commonly reduce the MIMO ca-
pacity [56], in the 60 GHz band, this reduction is often outweighed by another effect: LoS
obstruction typically goes hand-in-hand with the blockage of one or more MPCs, which in-
volve only a single reflection. At 60 GHz, these first-order reflected MPCs are comparably
strong (see Section 1.1.1). Hence, their loss may result in considerably reduced multipath
richness, which in turn increases spatial correlation (see Section 3.7.2). However, the effect
on the eigenvalue profile in Fig. 4.2 is not significant.
To obtain a qualitative insight into the impact of the link budget, the 10% outage capacity
is plotted versus SNR in Fig. 4.3. While in the low SNR regime, the curves for maxSINRsc
and MIMO WF coincide, maxSINRsc starts to deviate from the upper performance bound
from about SNR > 10 dB. It needs to be stressed that the eigenvalue ratios remain fixed – the
changes are solely caused by the SNR increase. With growing SNR, the eigenmodes become
3
Due to the large antenna spacings, the LoS path might exist for some but not all of the transmit/receive
antenna pairs for a given channel realisation. The subdivision of the channel ensemble is based on the
conditions between the first transmit and the first receive antenna element.
4
Note that the high-probability region is most interesting from a practical point of view as the corresponding
data rates can be supported with higher reliability or, equivalently, fewer outages.
5
Note that the lower accuracy of the histogram in the LoS case is due to the smaller number of LoS
realisations.
4.1. Spatially Separated Antennas 53
1
MIMO WF
0.8 maxSINRsc WF
MIMO EP
Pr(I > Abcissa)

SISO EP
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Spectral Efficiency [bps/Hz]
(a) LoS and NLoS
1
MIMO WF
0.8 maxSINRsc WF
MIMO EP
Pr(I > Abcissa)
SISO EP
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
(b) NLoS only
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)
0.6
0.4
MIMO WF
maxSINRsc WF
0.2 MIMO EP
SISO EP
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
(c) LoS only
Figure 4.1: Distribution of the mutual information for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 20λc antenna
spacing at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB.
stronger and the WF algorithm also starts to activate weaker eigenmodes. Consequently, the
capacity of the individual channel realisations grows, which in turn results in an increased
outage capacity. Since maxSINRsc BF is limited to transmitting only on the dominant
eigenmode of each subcarrier, its performance stays behind. Furthermore, it can be seen
7
LoS + NLoS
6 NLoS
LoS

hist λn,2 /λn,1 5
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
λn,2 /λn,1
Figure 4.2: Histogram of eigenvalue ratio λn,2 /λn,1 for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 20λc antenna
spacing.
8
10% Outage Capacity [bps/Hz]
MIMO WF
7
MIMO EP
6 maxSINRsc WF
SISO EP
5
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
SNR [dB]
Figure 4.3: Outage capacity for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 20λc antenna spacing.
from Fig. 4.3 that as SNR grows further, the advantage of the optimal WF power allocation
compared to a uniform allocation diminishes. In the limit SNR ∞, the relative strength
difference between the eigenmodes is no longer relevant and the curves for MIMO EP and
WF coincide. Interestingly, the outage capacity of MIMO EP exceeds that of maxSINRsc
only in the high SNR regime, which highlights the negative effect of allocating transmit power
to weak or zero eigenmodes when SNR is not sufficiently large. Due to the large path loss
at 60 GHz, realistic operating conditions are typically in the lower SNR range, suggesting
subcarrier-wise joint transmit and receive BF as a highly suitable scheme for 60 GHz radios.
This observation is in line with the results in Figs. 4.1(a) to (c). Note that those results
are more meaningful from a practical point of view as they take the distance-dependent link
budget SNR(dLoS ) according to Eq. (3.16) into account.
Fig. 4.4 shows the histograms of the eigenvalue ratio for the mixed PartOff B channel
ensemble and antenna spacings of 1, 10 and 20λc . It can be observed that the change of the
eigenvalue profile due to increased spacing is only minor. Even in the 1λc case, the eigen-
value ratios tend to be remarkably close to those resulting from larger spacings. Analogous
observations can be made from Fig. 4.5, which shows that the mutual information CCDFs
for 1 and 20λc antenna spacing practically coincide. Furthermore, it can be seen that the
4.1. Spatially Separated Antennas 55
18
1 λc spacing
16 10 λc spacing
20 λc spacing
14

12
hist λn,2 /λn,1

10
8
6
Antenna spacing
4
2
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
λn,2 /λn,1
Figure 4.4: Histogram of eigenvalue ratio λn,2 /λn,1 for 2×2 PartOff B channels with different an-
tenna spacings.
1
20 λc spacing
1 λc spacing
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Figure 4.5: Distribution of the mutual information for 2×2 PartOff B channels with 1λc and 20λc
antenna spacing at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB.
antenna spacing slightly affects the shape of the curves, indicating changing channel condi-
tions. One of the main reasons for this condition change is that when the antenna elements
are close together, the LoS path most likely exists (is blocked) between all transmit/receive
antenna pairs. On the contrary, the LoS path might exist (be blocked) for some but not all
transmit/receive antenna pairs when using large antenna spacings.
Given that even antenna spacings as large as 20λc provide negligible SM gain, considerably
larger antenna spacings are required for a sufficient reduction of the spatial correlation. Based
on the results in this section, it can be concluded that 60 GHz devices with reasonable antenna
spacings are generally unsuitable for SM. Due to the negligible multiplexing gains that have
been observed for 2×2 MIMO channels, results for larger array sizes are not included here.
Integrating more antennas into a device leads to smaller inter-element spacings, which in turn
tend to increase spatial correlation even further.
4.2 Polarisation Diversity
Results in the previous section have highlighted that non-rich multipath at 60 GHz gives
rise to unfavourable conditions for SM. In this section, SM in conjunction with polarisation
diversity (see Section 2.2.2) is explored as a potential signalling scheme over 60 GHz channels.
Rather than relying on the richness of the multipath propagation, the idea is to exploit its
scarceness. Consider the following example.
Example 4.1
In [70], it was demonstrated for Ricean channels that in the presence of a strong
fixed channel component (high Ricean K-factor), SM benefits from dual-polarised
antennas. Due to high K-factor, the variable channel component has little impact on
the channel conditions and hence, induces only limited polarisation mixing. Therefore,
the discrimination of the two orthogonal polarisations is preserved and the resulting
2×2 channel matrix has two significant eigenmodes.
Given 60 GHz channels are typically dominated by a few strong MPCs (see Section 3.7.1),
the effect of polarisation mixing can be anticipated to be comparably weak. Particularly in
situations dominated by a LoS component, using two orthogonal polarisations might there-
fore suffice to create a channel that is suitable for SM. In the following, two antenna array
configurations are considered, assuming perfect alignment of the transmit and receive antenna
elements:
k case: both terminals are equipped with two parallel ideal dipole antennas
⊥ case: both terminals are equipped with two orthogonal ideal dipole antennas
Whilst the k case is primarily intended for benchmarking, ⊥ refers to the case with polari-
sation diversity. Note that the assumption of ideal dipoles inherently implies perfect XPD
of the orthogonal polarisations. Pure LoS conditions therefore results in two perfectly sepa-
rated channels, as will be discussed in the following section. Practical 60 GHz LoS channels,
however, deviate from this ideal LoS-only case: indirect MPCs cause polarisation mixing (re-
call from Section 3.2.2 that electromagnetic waves generally change their polarisation upon
reflection), thereby reducing the XPD.
Before embarking on the performance evaluation by means of Monte-Carlo simulations,
a simple channel model for 60 GHz LoS channels is introduced in the following section. This
model will offer an insight into the multiplexing gains associated with the two aforementioned
antenna array configurations under ideal pure LoS conditions.
4.3 LoS–Only Channel Model
Motivated by the fact that in most cases, the direct component of a 60 GHz channel can be
expected to be significantly stronger than the specular components (see Section 3.7.1), the
frequency-selective 2×2 LoS channel is approximated by a single path per transmit/receive
antenna pair. This simplified model is henceforth referred to as the LoS-only model. As-
suming a separation between transmitter and receiver that is much larger than the antenna
element spacing, differences in path length are negligible and the channel for the two cases k
and ⊥ can be approximated as

1 β
H 0 = β 1 ejϕ , (4.2)
4.4. Numerical Results 57
where ϕ is the phase shift associated with propagation. Due to perfect XPD of the ideal
dipoles, β = 0 for the orthogonal antenna configuration and β = 1 for the parallel setup.
In order to compute the channel capacity for both antenna configurations, the eigenvalues
of H 0 H †0 are determined as a first step. When β = 0, the two resulting eigenvalues are found
as λ⊥,1 = λ⊥,2 = 1. From a SM point of view, this is the best-case channel as both eigenmodes
are equally strong. As a result, the optimal power allocation computed by the WF algorithm
is uniform, implying that the capacity with or without channel knowledge at the transmitter
is identical. From Eqs. (2.25) and (2.26), the capacity for the ⊥ case is found as
SNR

Cwf,⊥ = Cep,⊥ = 2 log2 1 + . (4.3)
2
For the parallel dipoles, β = 1 results in two distinct eigenvalues λk,1 = 4 and λk,2 = 0.
With a single non-zero eigenmode, this channel is not suitable for SM. For perfect channel
knowledge at the transmitter, the optimal strategy is to allocate all power to the non-zero
eigenmode. It should be stressed that this is equivalent to the optimal subcarrier-wise BF
scheme maxSINRsc, which utilises only the dominant eigenmode (see Section 2.3.1). From
Eqs. (2.26) and (2.41), the capacity/mutual information associated with these two schemes
is found as
Cwf,k = ImaxSINRsc,wf,k = log2 (1 + 4 SNR) . (4.4)
In contrast, the EP allocation in the absence of channel knowledge at the transmitter yields
a capacity of (see Eq. (2.25))
SNR

Cep,k = log2 1 + 4 = log2 (1 + 2 SNR) . (4.5)
2
Since half the transmitter power is allocated to the zero eigenmode, the power penalty of
not knowing the channel is 3 dB. If both terminals are equipped with only one antenna, the
capacity is
CSISO = log2 (1 + SNR) , (4.6)
where the additional power loss of 3 dB indicates the absence of array gain.
4.4 Numerical Results
This section compares results for ray-tracing-based 60 GHz channels with results for the sim-
plified LoS-only channel model introduced in the previous section. For the ray-tracing case,
ensembles of PartOff A channel realisations for desk-to-desk and single-desk transmission ac-
cording to Section 3.6 are considered. In the ⊥ case, transmit/receive arrays with co-located
antennas, one of which is vertically aligned, are used. Results for the k case were obtained
for two vertical dipoles, spaced λc /2 apart. Recall from Section 4.1 that the spacing would
need to be chosen unrealistically large to achieve any substantial multiplexing gain.
The capacity/mutual information for the LoS-only channel model and the two different
antenna configurations is shown in Fig. 4.6 as a function of SNR. The results for the SISO case
are shown for comparison. It can be seen that for low values of SNR, the capacity achieved
by the parallel dipoles is higher as a result of the full power transfer between all four antenna
pairs (see Eq. (4.2) with β = 1). It can also be seen that the slope of Cep,k and Cwf,k in the
high SNR regime is the same as that of CSISO . The reason is that the channel for β = 1 is
effectively a SISO channel with increased received power levels due to array gain. In contrast,
15
MIMO WF + EP ⊥
Mutual Information [bps/Hz]

MIMO WF k + maxSINRsc WF k
MIMO EP k
SISO EP
10
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
SNR [dB]
Figure 4.6: Capacity of the LoS-only model for different antenna array configurations.
the orthogonal setup suffers from a lower received power as there is no coupling between the
orthogonal dipoles (see Eq. (4.2) with β = 0). However, for high values of SNR, this power
penalty is outweighed by the multiplexing gain.
The LoS-only results have shown that even under ideal conditions, SM with polarisation
diversity offers an increased capacity only in the high SNR regime. In the context of 60 GHz
radios, high SNR can typically be achieved only over rather short operating distances. In the
following, the impact of indirect MPCs is investigated, using the more realistic ray-tracing
channel ensembles. Since the multipath situation is unique for different transmitter and
receiver placements, outage capacities for the ensembles instead of capacities for individual
channel realisations are presented. The 10% outage capacity for the PartOff A desk-to-desk
scenario is plotted versus SNR in Fig. 4.7(a). Comparison with Fig. 4.6 reveals that the shape
of the curve for MIMO EP ⊥ is quite similar in both cases. However, the transmitter can
now exploit channel knowledge by allocating less power to eigenmodes that have smaller gains
(due to frequency-selective fading and/or polarisation mixing). Therefore, a slight increase
of outage capacity can be observed when WF is applied, particularly at low values of SNR.
In the k case, more drastic changes can be observed for MIMO WF and EP. In contrast to
Fig. 4.6, the corresponding curves now exhibit a steeper slope than the SISO outage capacity,
indicating that some multiplexing gain is available in addition to array gain. In other words,
the second eigenvalue of each subcarrier λn,2 is no longer exactly zero. In principal, both
eigenmodes can be used for data transmission, provided SNR is sufficiently high. However, the
histogram of the eigenvalue ratios in Fig. 4.7(b) reveals that the second eigenvalue is still well
below the largest one. In comparison, the histogram for the orthogonal antenna configuration
is considerably shifted to the right. It can be concluded that the MIMO capacity for the k
setup primarily benefits from higher levels of received power, whereas the eigenvalue profile
in the ⊥ case favours SM. Fig. 4.7(a) also shows the optimality of the BF scheme maxSINRsc
for SNR up to approximately 10 dB. Once this threshold is exceeded, the outage capacity of
maxSINRsc WF starts to deviate from the upper bound MIMO WF k. This behaviour was
discussed in greater detail in Section 4.1.
So far, only the desk-to-desk scenario has been considered. However, analogous conclu-
sions can be drawn for the case where both terminals are located on the same desk. The
corresponding set of curves is shown in Figs. 4.7(c) and (d). Even though the results indicate
slightly richer multipath due to shorter link distances, the eigenvalue ratio remains well below
one for the k setup.
15 15
MIMO WF ⊥ MIMO WF ⊥

MIMO EP ⊥ MIMO EP ⊥
MIMO WF k MIMO WF k
MIMO EP k MIMO EP k
maxSINRsc WF k maxSINRsc WF k
10 SISO EP 10 SISO EP
5 5
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
SNR [dB] SNR [dB]
(a) Outage capacity, desk-to-desk transmission (c) Outage capacity, single-desk transmission
10 10
9 9
8 8
7 7

hist λn,2 /λn,1
hist λn,2 /λn,1

6 6
vert. dipoles vert. dipoles
5 5
4 4
orth. dipoles orth. dipoles
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
λn,2 /λn,1 λn,2 /λn,1
(b) Histogram, desk-to-desk transmission (d) Histogram, single-desk transmission
Figure 4.7: Outage capacity and histograms of eigenvalue ratio λn,2 /λn,1 for 2×2 PartOff A channels
with different antenna array configurations.
Note that a significantly weaker second eigenmode renders the channel unsuitable for
practical implementations of SM. For example, the probability of symbol error for uncoded
SM and maximum likelihood detection depends on the minimum squared Euclidean distance
between all possible received signal vectors [114]. This distance is guaranteed to be large only
if the smallest eigenvalue is large [114]. Due to this, the probability of symbol error is likely
to be high when the k channel is used for SM. Therefore, only polarisation-diversity-based
SM will be considered in the following.
The results in Figs. 4.7(a) and (c) showed an SNR-dependent relative performance of
the optimal BF scheme maxSINRsc and SM with polarisation diversity. Below a certain
SNR threshold, maxSINRsc outperforms SM, whereas the situation is reversed beyond this
crossover point. In practice, high SNR can be achieved only over short 60 GHz communication
links. Figs. 4.8(b) and (a) show the mutual information CCDFs for the two PartOff A
transmission scenarios, now taking the distance-dependent link budget SNR(dLoS ) according to
Eq. (3.16) into account. It can clearly be seen from Fig. 4.8(a) that maxSINRsc outperforms
SM in the desk-to-desk scenario where the SNR is low due to large link distances (dLoS averaged
across all realisations is approximately 5.1 m). In contrast, the polarisation-diversity-based
1 1
0.9 0.9
0.8 0.8
0.7
Pr(I > Abcissa)

0.7
Pr(I > Abcissa)
0.6 0.6
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3
MIMO WF ⊥ MIMO WF ⊥
0.2 MIMO EP ⊥ 0.2 MIMO EP ⊥
0.1 SISO EP 0.1 SISO EP
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
(a) desk-to-desk transmission (b) single-desk transmission
Figure 4.8: Distribution of the mutual information for 2×2 PartOff A channels and different antenna
array configurations at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB.
SM scheme benefits from the short link distances of the single-desk scenario (average dLoS
of approximately 1 m). Furthermore, Fig. 4.8 shows that for the orthogonal dipoles, channel
knowledge at the transmitter is more beneficial when the transmission occurs between desks,
which is consistent with the fact that the WF-related capacity gain is larger in the low
SNR regime [69]. Additionally, compared to the largest eigenvalue, the second eigenvalue
was observed to be slightly smaller in the desk-to-desk scenario (see Fig. 4.7), rendering the
optimal power allocation more advantageous.
So far, the dipole antennas have been assumed to be perfectly aligned. In order to
investigate the effect of misalignment, channel realisations were generated for the single-desk
scenario with a fixed rotation of the transmitter array about its vertical axis. The rotation
angle α describes the deviation from perfect alignment in counterclockwise direction. The
10% outage capacity is shown in Fig. 4.9(a) as a function of α. Note that the azimuth array
rotation α has a negligible effect on the outage capacities of maxSINRsc and the SISO link as
vertically aligned antennas are used in both cases. Although the specific maxSINRsc antenna
weights are affected by α (and thus, also the shape of the antenna patterns), the gain of the
main lobe stays approximately constant. Coupled with the fact that the CIRs are dominated
by a strong LoS component, this gives rise to the virtually constant behaviour observed from
Fig. 4.9. In contrast, the performance of the orthogonal setup degrades with growing α but
remains higher than the maxSINRsc performance up to about α = 36◦ . With α approaching
90◦ , the outage capacity for the uniform allocation even drops below that of the SISO link.
The reason is that the LoS component between the horizontal dipoles at the transmitter
and receiver becomes weaker until it completely disappears for α = 90◦ . The non-adaptive
EP allocation wastes power on the second eigenmode, which is now much weaker due to the
disappearing second LoS component. On the contrary, the optimal WF power allocation
adapts to the changing conditions and keeps the outage capacity slightly above that of the
SISO link. Also note that when higher outage probabilities are considered, the location of the
crossover point is shifted towards larger misalignment angles. From the 20% outage capacity
curves in Fig. 4.9(b), it can be seen that the crossover occurs at approximately α = 42◦ .
The more realistic case with an additional deviation from the vertical alignment is not
considered here in order to facilitate a clearer interpretation. It should be stressed though
that vertical misalignments can be expected to degrade the performance of both schemes, as
4.5. Summary 61
9 9
8 8

7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 MIMO WF ⊥ 2 MIMO WF ⊥
MIMO EP ⊥ MIMO EP ⊥
1 SISO EP
1 SISO EP
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
α [deg] α [deg]
(a) 10% outage capacity (b) 20% outage capacity
Figure 4.9: Outage capacity for 2×2 PartOff A single-desk channels and different antenna array
configurations at SNR(d0 ) = 8.32 dB.
well as the performance of the SISO link. Please note that the performance of the schemes
investigated in this section will also be affected by the imperfect XPD of practical antennas.
4.5 Summary
In this chapter, the capabilities of spatial multiplexing over typical 60 GHz channels were
explored. In the first part of this chapter, the impact of antenna spacing on the available
multiplexing gains and the eigenvalue profile of the channel matrices was investigated. Even
for antenna separations as large as 40λc (20 cm), the multiplexing gains were found to be
negligible. In line with this observation, simulation results have shown that the first eigenvalue
is typically much larger than the next smaller eigenvalue, i.e. most subcarrier channels offer
only one eigenmode of significant strength. Additionally, the near-optimality of joint transmit
and receive BF for mm-wave communications was highlighted by the results presented. Only
a small penalty in terms of mutual information is incurred (relative to the MIMO channel
capacity) when the optimal subcarrier-wise BF scheme is employed. This was found to be
the case even for large antenna spacings.
In the second part of this chapter, an alternative spatial multiplexing approach that re-
lies on polarisation diversity instead of spatially separated antenna elements was considered.
In LoS-dominated situations, it was demonstrated that two eigenmodes of similar strength
can be created by using antennas with two orthogonal polarisations. Over short links, where
the SNR is high, the polarisation-diversity-based scheme was found to outperform subcarrier-
wise BF. Furthermore, the impact of antenna misalignment was investigated and the proposed
scheme was demonstrated to tolerate moderate misalignments, before its performance drops
below that of subcarrier-wise BF. It is therefore applicable in situations where LoS transmis-
sion occurs over a short range and the user is in a position to roughly align the participating
devices. In practice, such conditions occur in a “Kiosk” scenario, involving the high-speed
download of multimedia content. If these conditions are not met, preference should be given
to the subcarrier-wise BF approach, which clearly performs better over longer links or in
NLoS situations. Another advantage of BF is that the antenna arrays can be extended to
larger number of antenna elements, thereby achieving higher array gains. In contrast, the
polarisation-diversity-based scheme is limited to two antennas per link end.
Chapter 5
Symbol–Wise Beamforming
The concept of symbol-wise BF was introduced in Section 2.3.2, including a brief discussion
of the iterative algorithm of [61]. Even though symbol-wise BF has been considered in the
literature as a low-complexity BF scheme for MIMO-OFDM transceivers, an upper bound
on the mutual information of symbol-wise BF systems is unknown. This chapter aims to
derive such a bound as a means to benchmark other symbol-wise BF solutions. Whilst this
problem is not tractable analytically, an iterative solution is found. Furthermore, a second
and much simpler algorithm is derived based on an alternative optimisation criterion. Com-
puter simulations show that both algorithms converge to virtually identical solutions. These
algorithms jointly compute the transmit and receive antenna weight vectors and hence, are
also suitable for practical symbol-wise BF implementations. Specifically the second algorithm
is not only characterised by low computational complexity, but also has the ability to sup-
press co-channel interference. Therefore, it overcomes one of the shortcomings of the existing
algorithm of [61], which is lacking this ability.
Before addressing the optimisation of symbol-wise BF, the conditions for its optimality
are considered in Section 5.1. Following this, the optimisation of the symbol-wise BF vectors
u and v is addressed, considering a number of performance metrics as possible starting point
for the derivations. In Section 5.2, the maximisation of the mutual information is considered.
It turns out that finding a close-form solution for this non-convex optimisation problem is
infeasible. As a simplification, the average SINR before OFDM demodulation is considered
in Section 5.3, but this alternative criterion still leads to a non-convex optimisation problem.
Despite non-convexity, it is possible to derive two iterative algorithms that compute the
solutions of the aforementioned problems numerically (see Section 5.4).
The following derivations heavily rely on the differentiation of scalar real-valued functions
of several complex-valued variables. Unless constant, such functions are non-analytic (or,
equivalently, non-holomorphic) [115] and thus, the complex derivative in the standard sense
does not exist. In this thesis, a generalised concept of complex differentiation – an extension
of the standard complex derivative to non-analytic functions – is used. A brief discussion
based on [115] can be found in Section B.1.
5.1 Optimality of Symbol–Wise Beamforming
An important insight into the types of channels for which symbol-wise BF can be expected to
work well can be gained from Theorem 2.1. The theorem states that the bound on SINRep,n
is tight if and only if u ∝ R−1W n Hn v. Consequently, symbol-wise BF is the optimal BF
64 Chapter 5. Symbol–Wise Beamforming
scheme if and only if this condition is satisfied for all n. Clearly, whenever only a single Hn
is non-zero this is possible – but not very realistic since that would correspond to all but one
subcarriers experiencing a total fade. The condition can also be satisfied when the vector
R−1W n Hn v points in a constant direction regardless of n. Since v is independent of n, this is
true if and only if the matrices R−1W n Hn are simply scaled versions of each other, i.e.
R−1
W n Hn = βn C (5.1)
with βn ∈ C and C ∈ CMrx ×Mtx being a constant matrix. The special case βn = 1 corresponds
to a frequency-flat channel. As expected, subcarrier-wise BF offers no advantage over symbol-
wise BF in this case as the channel remains fixed across all subcarriers. Are there any other
cases of interest? To answer this question, consider the following example.
Example 5.1
For simplicity, let us assume that RW n = I Mrx . Furthermore, assume that the
channel is modelled as Kron A according to Section 3.8 with full spatial correla-
tion (ρtx,l = ρrx,l = 1) and mean DoDs and DoAs ϕDoD,l = ϕDoA,l = 0. Under these
assumptions, all entries of Rtx,l and Rrx,l are unity (see Eqs. (3.26) and (3.27)). Con-
sequently, the individual channel taps H l can be written in the form αl C. As can be
seen from Eq. (3.25), C is the all-one matrix and αl depends exclusively on the PDP
σl2 and the current realisation of Gl . Using Eq. (2.11), the frequency domain channels
can now be written as
L−1 L−1 L−1
X n X n X n
Hn = H l e−j2πl N = αl Ce−j2πl N = C αl e−j2πl N
l=0 l=0
|l=0 {z }
βn
and thus, Eq. (5.1) is satisfied for all n. In other words, symbol-wise BF is optimal
for this particular fully correlated channel, where each channel tap corresponds to a
single MPC (i.e. a plane wave) that departs in/arrives from the broadside directions
of the uniform linear antenna arrays.
Particularly for channels with sparse multipath, the mean DoDs and DoAs can be ex-
pected to be non-zero and generally different from tap to tap. However, simulation results
in Section 5.5.1 will demonstrate that even when the assumption of zero mean directions is
dropped, the performance gap between subcarrier-wise and symbol-wise BF decreases with
increasing spatial correlation.
5.2 Maximisation of the Mutual Information
Recall from Section 2.3.1 that in subcarrier-wise BF, it was possible to decouple the optimi-
sation of the antenna weight vectors and power allocation via a two-step procedure. First,
the antenna weight vectors of each subcarrier are chosen such that the corresponding re-
ceived SINR is maximised. In a second step, the waterfilling algorithm then operates on
the resulting SINRs to compute the optimal power allocation. Compared to subcarrier-wise
BF, symbol-wise BF suffers from a reduced degree of freedom, which renders the indepen-
dent maximisation of the per-subcarrier SINRs impossible (see Section 2.3.2). If the antenna
weight vectors u and v are chosen such that the received SINR on a particular subcarrier
is maximised, the SINRs of the remaining subcarriers will in general not be maximised at
5.2. Maximisation of the Mutual Information 65
the same time. Furthermore, the optimal u and v will not only be a function of the sub-
carrier channels Hn but also of the power allocation. For illustration, consider the following
example.
Example 5.2
Assume the nth subcarrier does not get allocated any power. Consequently, the cor-
responding channel Hn should ideally have no influence on u and v. In contrast to
this, the channel Hn will have to be taken into account if a non-zero amount of power
µn is allocated to that subcarrier.
In order to create the same conditions that were used in Section 2.3.1, all N channels
Hn are assumed to be perfectly known to both the transmitter and the receiver. The aim
is to find the optimal power allocation vector µ = [µ0 , . . . , µN −1 ]T and the optimal antenna
weight vectors u and v, which solve the constrained maximisation problem
N −1
X 1
maximise I (u, v, µ) = log2 (1 + µn SINRep,n (u, v))
u,v,µ N
n=0
†
subject to v v 6 1 (5.2)
N
X −1
µn 6 N,
n=0
where I is the mutual information according to Eq. (2.47) and where the constraints ensure
that the available transmit power is not exceeded (see Section 2.3.1). Constraining the receive
antenna weight vector u is not necessary as it equally scales the desired and unwanted signal
components.
In order to find a closed-form solution of (5.2), this problem will first be transformed
into an equivalent unconstrained maximisation problem. This can be achieved by defining
an augmented objective function
N −1
!
X
LI (u, v, µ, ζ, ν) = I (u, v, µ) − ζ v † v − 1 − ν µn − N , (5.3)
n=0
the so-called Lagrangian (e.g. see [73]). The variables ζ and ν are the Lagrange multipliers [73]
that are associated with the constraints on the variable vectors v and µ, respectively. Let
T
x denote the stacked variable vector x = uT v T µT . To find the x̂ that maximises

Eq. (5.3), the gradient ∇x LI of the Lagrangian is taken with respect to x and set equal to
zero, i.e.1
 
∇u LI û, v̂, µ̂, ζ̂, ν̂
 
∇x LI x̂, ζ̂, ν̂ =  ∇v LI û, v̂, µ̂, ζ̂, ν̂  = 0. (5.4)
 
 
∇µ LI û, v̂, µ̂, ζ̂, ν̂

Following similar steps as [7, p.357], ∇µ LI û, v̂, µ̂, ζ̂, ν̂ = 0 yields the optimal power allo-
cation
+
1 1
µ̂n = − . (5.5)
η SINRep,n (û, v̂)
1
Note that taking the partial derivatives with respect to any of the Lagrange multipliers simply yields the
original constraint associated with that multiplier. Therefore, they are not included in Eq. (5.4).
Note that Eq. (5.5) is simply the standard WF algorithm for a SISO-OFDM link with water-
level η [7, p.357]. As intuitively expected, µ̂n depends on the antenna weight vectors û and
v̂ (via SINRep,n ). Their optimisation is considered in the next section.
5.2.1 Optimisation of the Antenna Weight Vectors
In order to find the optimal u and v, the gradients of the Lagrangian LI in Eq. (5.3) with
respect to u and v need to be computed. First, consider the gradient with respect to v, i.e.
∇v LI (u, v, µ, ζ, ν) = ∇v I (u, v, µ) − ζv
N −1
1 X µn ∇v SINRep,n (u, v)
= − ζv. (5.6)
N log 2 1 + µn SINRep,n (u, v)
n=0
From Eqs. (2.37) and (2.46), the gradient of SINRep,n with respect to v can be found as
†
∂ v † H†n uu† Hn v

∇v SINRep,n (u, v) = Ps
∂v u† RW n u
!†
v † H†n uu† Hn ∂v
∂
v
= Ps
u† RW n u
H†n uu† Hn v
= Ps , (5.7)
u† R W n u
and substituting this result into Eq. (5.6) yields
N −1
1 X µn Ps H†n uu† Hn v
∇v LI (u, v, µ, γ, ζ, ν) = − ζv
N log 2 u†R u + µ P u† H vv † H† u
n=0 W n n s n n
N −1
1 X µn Ps H†n uu† Hn v
= − ζv. (5.8)
N log 2
n=0
u† RW n + µn Ps Hn vv † H†n u
Setting the gradient to zero results in

N −1
1 X µ̂n Ps H†n ûû† Hn v̂
= ζ̂ v̂, (5.9)
N log 2 û†
R + µ̂ P H v̂v̂ † †
H
n=0 Wn n s n n û
which will henceforth be referred to as the first condition for maximum mutual information.
Even if the optimal power allocation µ̂, the optimal vector û, and the optimal multiplier ζ̂ are
assumed to be known, the task of finding v̂ from this expression seems to be infeasible because
v̂ occurs in all summation terms in both the numerator and the denominator. The second
condition obtained from ∇u LI = 0 is even more complicated (see Section A.3). Therefore, it
can be concluded that solving the optimisation problem (5.2) in closed form is not possible.
Furthermore, non-concavity of the objective function I rules out the use of convex opti-
misation techniques (e.g. see [73]) to compute the optimal u and v numerically. To see this,
consider Theorem 5.1, which applies to the simplified objective function
N −1

X 1
I (u, v) = I (u, v, µ=1) = log2 1 + Ps (5.10)
N u† RW n u
n=0
found from Eqs. (2.47) and (2.46) for a uniform power allocation µ = 1, where 1 denotes the
all-one vector.
5.3. Maximisation of the SINR before OFDM Demodulation 67
I(x0 + θx) [bps/Hz]

3
0
-4 -2 0 2 4
θ
Figure 5.1: Mutual information I for antenna weight vectors restricted to randomly generated lines
x0 + θx and a selected 3×3 PartOff B channel realisation.
Theorem 5.1. The function

N −1

X 1
I (u, v) = log2 1 + Ps ,
N u† RW n u
n=0
is not jointly concave in both variable vectors u and v.
Fig. 5.1 illustrates the non-concavity of I (u, v) by restricting it to a number of lines

x0 + θx within its domain. The lines are specified by a scalar real-valued parameter θ, a
fixed base point x0 and a fixed direction vector x both of which are stacked vectors of the
T
form x = uT v T . Each curve in Fig. 5.1 corresponds to a randomly generated (i.i.d.

uniform) pair of unit-norm base point and line direction, plotted versus θ. It can be clearly
seen that none of the curves is concave. Given a function f is concave (convex) if and only
if it is concave (convex) when restricted to any line that lies within the domain of f [73],
this implies that the unrestricted I (u, v) is not concave. The fact that even the simplified
objective function I (u, v) is not jointly concave in u and v suggests that I (u, v, µ) is not
jointly concave in all three variable vectors either. The formal proof of Theorem 5.1 can be
found in Section A.4.
Another metric that is related to the mutual information is the minimum mean squared
error (MMSE) between the channel input Sn0 and the linear MMSE estimate of Sn0 obtained
from the channel output Yn0 [116, p.6]. As an alternative to the mutual information, the
average of the per-subcarrier MMSEs was considered to optimise symbol-wise BF. However,
the derivatives of this non-convex metric are even more involved than those found in this
section and are therefore not discussed any further.
As the joint optimisation of power allocation and antenna weight vectors was found to be
intractable, a uniform power allocation µ = 1 will be assumed in the following.
5.3 Maximisation of the SINR before OFDM Demodulation
In the previous section, the maximisation of the mutual information was considered. As this
optimisation problem turned out to be intractable, a simpler optimisation metric is considered
in this section, namely the average received SINR at the input of the OFDM demodulator
(SINRpre ). Recall from Section 2.3.2 that the authors of [82] were able to derive the weight
vector for symbol-wise receive BF in closed form by maximising this metric. Even though
this work was aimed at mitigating delay-spread-induced ISI between OFDM symbols in a
SIMO setting, this approach will also prove useful in the context of MIMO channels subject
to co-channel interference.
According to Eq. (2.49), the received signal at the input of the DFT block is given by
L−1
X
y 0 [k] = u† H l vs0 [k − l] + u† w[k]. (5.11)
l=0
From Eq. (5.11), SINRpre can be found as

2
PL−1 † 0
E l=0 u H l vs [k − l]

SINRpre (u, v) = n 2 o
E u† w[k]
n o
† H † u E s0 [k − l]2
PL−1 †
l=0 u H l vv l
=
u E{w[k]w† [k]} u
†
u H l vv † H †l u
PL−1 †
= Ps l=0 † , (5.12)
u Rw u
where the expectations were carried out with respect to s0 and w, taking into account that
s0 is temporally
uncorrelated and has variance Ps (see Section 2.3.2). Furthermore, Rw =
E w[k]w† [k] is the covariance matrix of the time-domain interference-plus-noise vector w.
For convenience, A and B are introduced as shorthand for
L−1
H †l uu† H l ,
X
A(u) = Ps (5.13)
l=0
L−1
H l vv † H †l .
X
B(v) = Ps (5.14)
l=0
With these definitions, Eq. (5.12) can be expressed as
u† B(v) u v † A(u) v
SINRpre (u, v) = = . (5.15)
u† Rw u u† Rw u
Furthermore, it is possible to express SINRpre in terms of the frequency-domain quantities Hn
and RW n . Omitting details, Eq. (5.12) can be rewritten as (see Section A.7)
PN −1 †
u Hn vv † H†n u
1
SINRpre (u, v) = Ps n=0P N . (5.16)
−1
u† N1 Nn=0 R Wn u
Before embarking on the maximisation of SINRpre over u and v, consider the following
special case. In the absence of co-channel interference, it is reasonable to assume that the
noise process is the same on all subcarriers. Consequently, RW n is independent of n and the
expectation in the denominator of Eq. (5.16) can be carried out, resulting in
PN −1 N −1
1
N n=0 u† Hn vv † H†n u 1 X u† Hn vv † H†n u
SINRpre (u, v) = Ps = Ps . (5.17)
u† R W n u N u† RW n u
n=0
5.3. Maximisation of the SINR before OFDM Demodulation 69
Comparison with Eq. (2.46) reveals that this is just the average of the per-subcarrier SINRs
for an equal power allocation
N −1
1 X
SINRpre (u, v) = SINRep,n (u, v) . (5.18)
N
n=0
In this special case without co-channel interference, it is possible to establish a relationship

between SINRpre and the mutual information I for an equal power allocation µ = 1. Since the
logarithm in the mutual information expression (2.47) is a concave function [73], application
of Jensen’s inequality [117] yields
N −1
1 X
I (u, v, µ=1) = log2 (1 + SINRep,n (u, v))
N
n=0
N −1
!
1 X
6 log2 (1 + SINRep,n (u, v))
N
n=0
N −1
!
1 X
= log2 1+ SINRep,n (u, v) , (5.19)
N
n=0
| {z }
SINRpre
which is an upper bound on the mutual information. Noting the second term in the argument
equals SINRpre , it can be concluded that in the interference-free case, maximising SINRpre over
u and v is equivalent to maximising the mutual information bound in Eq. (5.19). Also noting
that log2 x can be written as log x/ log 2 and that the approximation log (1 + x) ≈ x holds
for small x [118], the bound in Eq. (5.19) becomes tight as SINRpre decreases. In the limit
SINRpre → 0, the u and v that maximise SINRpre will therefore coincide with the u and v that
maximise I.
In the general case, the optimisation problem associated with the maximisation of SINRpre
can be stated as2
maximise SINRpre (u, v) (5.20)

u,v
subject to v † v 6 1.
It needs to be stressed that the maximisation of SINRpre in (5.20) is not equivalent to the
maximisation of the mutual information I in (5.2) and thus, the corresponding solutions are
not guaranteed to coincide. However, results in Section 5.4 demonstrate that the numerical
solutions of (5.2) and (5.20) yield very similar values of I, thereby confirming the usefulness
of SINRpre as an optimisation metric.
Unfortunately, the situation is similar to that in Section 5.2: convex optimisation tech-
niques cannot be applied as the objective function SINRpre is not jointly concave in u and
v (for the proof see Section A.5). Following similar steps as in Section 5.2, the method of
Lagrange multipliers yields the optimality conditions (see Section A.6)
A(û) v̂ = ζ 0 v̂, (5.21)

B(v̂) û = γRw û, (5.22)
where ζ 0 and γ are real-valued scalars. Under the assumption that the receive side vector û
is fixed, Eq. (5.21) can be interpreted as an eigenproblem with eigenvector v̂ and eigenvalue
2
The trivial case of a frequency-flat channel is not considered here. For L = 1, SINRpre has the same form
as SINRep,n in Eq. (2.36) and hence, is maximised by the solution described in Section 2.3.1.
ζ 0 . In other words, if a closed-form expression for û existed, the optimal transmit side vector
v̂ would be given by the dominant eigenvector of matrix A(û). Eq. (5.22) is a generalised
eigenproblem with γ and û being the generalised eigenvalue and eigenvector of the matrix
pencil formed by B(v̂) and Rw [78]. As with the first condition (5.21), this generalised
eigenproblem can only be solved if the optimal v̂ is already known. The coupling of these
two eigenproblems through the matrices A and B renders finding a closed-form solution
intractable.3 However, the structure of the problem – more specifically, the coupled optimality
conditions in form of two eigenproblems – can be used to derive an iterative algorithm for
the numerical maximisation of SINRpre (see Section 5.4.1).
5.4 Numerical Optimisation of Symbol–Wise BF
Even though a closed-form solution for the maximisation problems associated with the mu-
tual information (see Section 5.2) and the SINR at the input of the OFDM demodulator
(see Section 5.3) remains unknown, an iterative algorithm that carries out the optimisation
numerically can be derived in both cases. Due to its much simpler structure, the iterative
algorithm for the maximisation of SINRpre will be discussed first.
5.4.1 Iterative Algorithm: maxSINRsym
The structure of the optimality conditions Eqs. (5.21) and (5.22) suggests the following itera-
tive procedure: solve the generalised eigenproblem (5.22) for some initial vector v, substitute
the resulting vector u into Eq. (5.21), solve the corresponding eigenproblem and so forth. In
pseudo-code, the algorithm can be written as shown in Table 5.1(a). This algorithm will be
referred to as maxSINRsym in the following. After initialising the iteration index q and vector
v, Step 2 maximises SINRpre for the given vector v by choosing u as the dominant generalised
eigenvector of the matrix pencil formed by B and Rw . Similarly, SINRpre is then maximised
for the given vector u in Step 3 by choosing v as the dominant eigenvector of A. (Of course,
initialising u and swapping Steps 2 and 3 is also possible). It follows that the sequence of
iterates is non-decreasing. Taking into account that v is constrained to v † v 6 1, it can easily
be shown that SINRpre is bounded from above, and it can be concluded that the proposed
algorithm is guaranteed to converge. Note that it may converge to a local maximum rather
than the global solution. However, as will be shown in Section 5.4.3 by means of Monte-Carlo
simulations, convergence to local maxima results in negligible performance loss.
Interference–Free Case
In the absence of co-channel interference and under the assumption of spatially white noise,
Rw ∝ I Mrx . Consequently, the generalised eigenproblem in Eq. (5.22) and Step 2 of Ta-
ble 5.1(a) simplifies to a standard eigenproblem. It can be shown that the proposed algo-
rithm in this special case is equivalent to that of [61]. Note that the notation in [61] is quite
different from the notation used in this thesis. However, equivalence can be shown by rewrit-
ing A and B in terms of the Kronecker product. It should be mentioned that this solution
was discovered independently by the author of this thesis by maximising the SNR averaged
across all subcarriers. Recall that in contrast, the derivations in [61] are based on the average
pair-wise code word distance. It is possible to show that these two metrics are equivalent.
3
Note that a closed-form solution is readily available when either of the terminals is equipped with only
one antenna. When Mrx = 1, û is an arbitrary but fixed complex scalar, resulting in a fixed A. Consequently,
Eq. (5.21) can be analytically solved for v̂. Analogously, B is fixed when Mtx = 1 and u can be computed
from Eq. (5.22).
5.4. Numerical Optimisation of Symbol–Wise BF 71
Table 5.1: Pseudo-code for maxSINRsym.
(a) via general EVD (b) via power method (PM)
Iterative SINRpre Maximisation Iterative SINRpre Maximisation via PM

0 Set q ← 0 0 Set q ← 0
1 Initialise v[q] 1 Initialise u[q] and v[q]
repeat repeat
repeat
2 u[q+1] ← dominant generalised eigen- 2.1 u[q+1] ← R−1 w B(v[q]) u[q]
vector of B(v[q]) and Rw 2.2 q ←q+1
until NPM iterations reached
repeat
3 v[q+1] ← dominant eigenvector of 3.1 v[q+1] ← A(u[q]) v[q]
A(u[q+1]) 3.2 q ←q+1
4 q ←q+1 until NPM iterations reached
until stopping criterion met until stopping criterion met
Table 5.2: Pseudo-code for the (modified) power method.
(a) Power method (PM) (b) Modified power method (MPM)
Power Method for Ax = λx Modified Power Method for A(x) x = λx

0 Set q ← 0 0 Set q ← 0
1 Initialise x[q] 1 Initialise x[q]
repeat repeat
2 Update A(x[q])
2 x[q+1] ← Ax[q] 3 x[q+1] ← A(x[q]) x[q]
3 q ←q+1 4 q ←q+1
until stopping criterion met until stopping criterion met
To distinguish the interference-unaware scheme of [61] from its interference-aware coun-

terpart maxSINRsym, it will be referred to as maxSNRsym.
Implementation Considerations
For the numerical computation of the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of standard eigenproblems,
several EVD algorithms exist. A number of these EVD techniques are discussed in [78],
including the QR-algorithm and the power method (PM). If only the dominant eigenvector
of a matrix is of interest, the PM [78, p.330] is a highly attractive choice. This is primarily
due to its simplicity and comparably low computational complexity: only one matrix-vector
multiplication per iteration is required. Table 5.2(a) shows the PM in pseudo-code. The
sequence x[q] converges to the dominant eigenvector of A, provided x[0] has a non-zero
component in its direction and the largest eigenvalue of A is unique [78, p.331]. The ratio
of the absolute values of the second-largest to the largest eigenvalue dictates the rate of
convergence: a ratio close to one results in slow convergence [78, p.331]. To solve generalised
eigenproblems, the QZ-algorithm [78, p.375], a variant of the QR-algorithm, is typically used.
For such problems, an algorithm as simple as the PM does not exist. However, provided
the covariance matrix Rw is non-singular, the generalised eigenproblem in Eq. (5.22) can
be rewritten as the standard eigenproblem associated with the matrix R−1 w B(v̂). Then,
conventional EVD techniques can be applied, including the PM.4 When using the PM to
find the dominant eigenvectors in Steps 2 and 3 of Table 5.1(a), the algorithm maxSINRsym
can be written as shown in Table 5.1(b). Due to the iterative structure of the PM itself,
the question of scheduling arises: how often should the PM Steps 2.1 and 2.2 be repeated,
before moving on to Step 3? Does the number of PM iterations NPM need to be chosen large
enough to allow for convergence? These questions will be addressed later in Section 5.4.3,
where computer simulations indicate a small NPM to be beneficial. Henceforth, the inherent
maxSINRsym iterations will be referred to as outer iterations to avoid confusion of with the
internal PM iterations.
In practice, the channel and the covariance of noise and interference are not perfectly
known but need to be estimated by the receiver. Depending on where the estimation of
these quantities is carried out most conveniently, the algorithm for symbol-wise BF can be
implemented in either the time or frequency domain. In order to see this, recall that SINRpre
can either be expressed in terms of the time-domain or the frequency-domain quantities (cf.
Eqs. (5.12) and (5.16)). Both expressions have the same form and thus, lead to an equivalent
algorithm. To obtain the frequency-domain
√ PN −1 version of maxSINRsym, H l and Rw simply
need to be replaced by Hn / N and n=0 RW n /N (and the summations need to be carried
out over all subcarriers rather than all channel taps).
Furthermore, maxSINRsym may be deployed in a distributed fashion if the channel is
reciprocal.5 A major advantage of this approach is that each terminal only needs to estimate
a vector channel rather than the full channel matrix H l . In the initial phase, the first
terminal uses an arbitrary BF vector v. The second terminal estimates the effective vector
channel bl (v) = H l v and computes the SINRpre -maximising receive vector u as the dominant
eigenvector of
L−1
bl (v) b†l (v) .
X
B(v) = Ps (5.23)
l=0
Due to channel reciprocity, u is also used for transmission from the second terminal. Anal-
ogously, the first terminal then estimates the effective vector channel al (u) = H †l u and
updates v based on
L−1
al (u) a†l (u) .
X
A(u) = Ps (5.24)
l=0
This procedure corresponds to one maxSINRsym iteration and may be repeated a number
of times. A similar distributed approach for frequency-flat channels was proposed in [119].
Also note that whilst the aforementioned procedure depends on H l , it is independent of the
AWGN variance σw 2 and thus, can still be applied even if the two terminals have different
noise figures.
5.4.2 Iterative Algorithm: maxMIsym
Motivated by the algorithm maxSINRsym that was found for the maximisation of SINRpre , the
optimisation problem associated with the mutual information (see Section 5.2) is revisited in
4
Note that this approach may lead to large roundoff errors if Rw is ill-conditioned [78, p.375]. It remains
a subject of future research to investigate in which situations the covariance matrix Rw is well-conditioned.
Also note that while B changes over the iterations of maxSINRsym, Rw remains fixed. Therefore, its inverse
needs to be computed only once.
5
Note that the assumption of channel reciprocity is only realistic when interference is absent (spatially
separated terminals are likely to be subject to different interference signals).
this section. The first optimality condition was found as (see Eq. (5.9))
N −1
1 X Ps H†n ûû† Hn
v̂ = ζ̂ v̂, (5.25)
N log 2 û †
R + P H v̂v̂ † †
H
n=0 Ŵ n s n n û
| {z }
C(û,v̂)
where µn = 1 corresponding to a uniform power allocation has been substituted. On closer

examination, Eq. (5.25) resembles some similarity with an eigenproblem. However, unlike
in a normal eigenproblem, the matrix C in Eq. (5.25) is a function of the vector v̂, i.e.
the eigenproblem is non-linear in its eigenvector v̂. As conventional eigendecomposition
techniques cannot be applied to such problems, the modified power method (MPM) was
proposed in [120]. The pseudo-code for the MPM is given in Table 5.2(b). When compared
to the original PM in Table 5.2(a), the MPM incorporates an additional step at the beginning
of each iteration, which updates the matrix A(x) using the current iterate x[q] (Step 2). Given
that the matrix A changes in each iteration, it is not possible to prove convergence of the
MPM [120]. However, simulation results indicate that the algorithm generally converges [120].
Due to its more involved structure, using the MPM to solve the second optimality con-
dition in Eq. (A.18) for û does not seems to be possible in general. However, for the special
case, where the interference-plus-noise covariance matrices are constant across all subcarriers,
i.e. RW n = RW for all n, Eq. (A.18) can be written as (again assuming µn = 1)
N −1
1 X Ps Hn v̂v̂ † H†n
û = γRW û, (5.26)
N log 2 û †
R + P H v̂v̂ † †
H
n=0 W s n n û
| {z }
D(û,v̂)
† † †
1
N
X −1 Ps û H n v̂v̂ Hn û
û† RW û
γ= (5.27)
N log 2 û†
R + P H v̂v̂ † †
H
n=0 W s n n û.
Assuming an invertible RW , Eq. (5.26) can be written as
R−1
W D(û, v̂) û = γ û, (5.28)
which can now be solved for û using the MPM.6 The iterative maximisation of the mutual
information can therefore be achieved with the algorithm in Table 5.3. This algorithm will
be referred to as maxMIsym in the following and its convergence behaviour will be discussed
in Section 5.4.3. Note that similar to the PM-based implementation of maxSINRsym (see
Section 5.4.1), the scheduling of maxMIsym is controlled by the number of MPM iterations
NPM .
While maxMIsym maximises the mutual information, this algorithm comes at the expense
of higher computational complexity than the SINRpre -maximising algorithm maxSINRsym.
Not only is the computation of the matrices C and D much more involved than that of A
and B, but they also need to be updated in every MPM iteration.
5.4.3 Convergence Behaviour of Proposed Algorithms
In this section, the convergence behaviour of the proposed algorithms maxSINRsym and
maxMIsym is discussed, assuming the interference-free case. While the focus is on maxSINR-
6
Note that it might also be possible to compute a numerical solution for the more general case where
RW n varies across subcarriers. However, at the time of writing, the investigations were still ongoing and are
therefore not presented here.
Table 5.3: Pseudo-code for maxMIsym.
Iterative Maximisation of I
0 Set q ← 0
1 Initialise u[q] and v[q]
repeat
repeat
2.1 Update D(u[q], v[q])
2.2 u[q+1] ← R−1 W D(u[q], v[q]) u[q]
2.3 q ←q+1
repeat
3.1 Update C(u[q], v[q])
3.2 v[q+1] ← C(u[q], v[q]) v[q]
3.3 q ←q+1
until stopping criterion met
sym, analogous conclusions also apply to maxMIsym. As mentioned in Section 5.4.1, max-
SINRsym may not find the global maximum. Fig. 5.2(a) illustrates the convergence behaviour
of maxSINRsym for a selected 60 GHz channel realisation by plotting how SINRpre evolves over
the iterations. The algorithm maxSINRsym was implemented using MATLAB® ’s EVD func-
tion eig. Each line in Fig. 5.2(a) corresponds to one of 200 random initialisations v[0] and
clearly, two distinct convergence levels can be observed. Fig. 5.2(b) demonstrates that the
effect on ensemble results is only minor. The dash-dotted (dashed) curves are the mutual
information CCDFs obtained by picking the vectors u and v corresponding to the lowest
(highest) convergence level that was detected for each realisation, using 1000 random initial-
isations and the stopping criterion7
SINRpre [q] − SINRpre [q−1] 6 10−6 . (5.29)
For the 3×3 arrays, it can be seen in Fig. 5.2(b) that the gap between lower and upper
bound is only small, implying that local maxima are mostly rather close to the global solu-
tion. The solid curves in between the bounds were generated by using only a single random
initialisation. Although the gap between the bounds is larger in the 5×5 case, the curve for
random v[0] is still much closer to the upper bound. The fact that random initialisations
almost achieve the upper bounds suggests that local maxima occur with low probability.8 In
fact, multiple convergence levels were detected for only 15.2% of the 3×3 channel realisations
and maxSINRsym converged to the highest detected level for 95.8% of the initialisations.
The corresponding statistics for 4×4 and 5×5 arrays are listed in Table 5.4(a). While the
probability for channel realisations with multiple convergence levels increases with growing
array size, the rightmost column shows that the probability of converging to the highest level
decreases at a much slower rate and does not drop below 90% for the considered cases. It
should also be mentioned that computer simulations have shown the convergence statistics
to be virtually identical when the PM-based implementation of maxSINRsym is used, i.e. the
number of PM iterations NPM has a negligible effect on the statistical results.
The mean number of outer iterations required by maxSINRsym to satisfy the stopping
criterion in Eq. (5.29) is listed in the fourth column of Table 5.5 for different values of PM
iterations. It can be seen that the PM-based implementation with NPM = 10 requires only
slightly more iterations than the eig-based implementation, indicating that NPM = 10 is
almost sufficient to allow for convergence to the dominant eigenvector in every step. It
7
The corresponding stopping criterion for maxMIsym is I[q] − I[q−1] 6 10−6 .
8
Note that in [61], similar conclusions were drawn for the iterative symbol-wise BF algorithm maxSNRsym.
7 1
upper bound
0.9 random v[0]
6.5 lower bound
0.8
6
[dB]
0.7
Pr(I > Abcissa)

5.5
SINRpre (u[q], v[q])
0.6
5×5
5 0.5
3×3
0.4
4.5
0.3
4
0.2
3.5 0.1
3 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6
Iteration Index q Spectral Efficiency [bps/Hz]
(a) (b)
Figure 5.2: Convergence behaviour of maxSINRsym for 60 GHz channels (PartOff B): (a) Conver-
gence trajectories for a selected 3×3 channel realisation and 200 random initialisations
v[0] and (b) CCDF of the mutual information for random v[0] with lower and upper
bound for different array sizes.
Table 5.4: Convergence statistics for PartOff B channels.
(a) maxSINRsym
Array size Probability of realisations with Probability of converg-

1 2 3 4 5 6 levels ing to highest level
3×3 84.8% 14.7% 0.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 95.8%
4×4 73.8% 24.4% 1.7% 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% 93.0%
5×5 62.0% 33.6% 4.2% 0.2% 0.0% 0.0% 90.0%
(b) maxMIsym with NPM = 1
Array size Probability of realisations with Probability of converg-

1 2 3 4 5 6 levels ing to highest level
3×3 68.9% 27.7% 3.2% 0.1% 0.1% 0.0% 91.7%
4×4 51.4% 39.5% 8.6% 0.5% 0.0% 0.0% 87.2%
5×5 37.0% 43.8% 17.1% 2.0% 0.1% 0.1% 83.9%
can also be seen that the required number of outer iterations is notably affected by the
algorithm scheduling: it increases as NPM decreases. However, the rightmost column of
Table 5.5 shows that the total number of PM iterations required to satisfy Eq. (5.29) reduces
at the same time. On average, only 14.2 PM iterations are necessary when using NPM = 1.
Furthermore, simulation results not included here due to space limitations showed that the
mutual information CCDFs and bounds for different values of NPM are virtually identical to
those in Fig. 5.2(b). Therefore, it can be concluded that choosing NPM sufficiently large to
allow for convergence of the PM to the dominant eigenvector of the individual eigenproblems
is unnecessary. Analogous conclusions can be drawn for maxMIsym (see last two rows of
Table 5.5).
Table 5.5: Mean number of iterations until convergence for maxSINRsym and maxMIsym for 3×3
PartOff B channels.
Algorithm Implementation NPM Mean number Mean number

outer iterations (M)PM iterations
maxSINRsym eig 2.90
maxSINRsym PM 10 2.95 59.0
maxMIsym MPM 10 2.39 47.8
maxMIsym MPM 1 4.60 9.2
Computational Complexity
This section aims to compare the computational complexities of the various BF algorithms
considered in this thesis. Due to the different nature of the algorithms (e.g. not all of them
are iterative), different implementation options (e.g. maxSINRsym can be implemented either
in the time domain or in the frequency domain), as well as a large number of system and
algorithm parameters, a comprehensive comparison is complicated. Therefore, a number of
assumptions will need to be made for the following discussions.
Before embarking on the complexity analysis, it should be stressed that only the antenna
weight computation will be considered, i.e. the complexity of the OFDM (de)modulation
will not be taken into account. Recall from Section 2.3.2 that subcarrier-wise BF requires
(Mtx +Mrx ) /2 times as many DFT processors as symbol-wise BF. Particularly for large an-
tenna arrays, the additional complexity can be considerable. Furthermore, it should be taken
into account that in slowly varying channels, the antenna weights need to be updated at a
much slower rate than the OFDM symbol rate. In contrast, the OFDM (de)modulation still
needs to be carried out for every OFDM symbol. Overall, a complexity reduction of the BF
algorithm is therefore not as crucial as low-complexity DFT processing.
The two BF algorithms maxSINRsc and maxSINRsym heavily rely on the EVD, whose
computational complexity depends on the specific implementation (e.g. see [78]). Roughly,
direct EVD methods require O n3 operations to decompose a square matrix of size n (see
Section 2.3.1). In order to enable a more precise complexity comparison of the BF algorithms,
the EVD is assumed to be implemented via the PM as described in Table 5.2(a). The
number of complex multiplications and additions9 required by these algorithms is listed in
Table 5.6(a), together with the corresponding operation counts for the MPM-based algorithm
maxMIsym according to Section 5.4.2. Note that the maxSINRsym and maxMIsym counts
refer to the number of operations per outer iteration, whereas the total number of operations
is listed for maxSINRsc (recall from Section 2.3.1 that maxSINRsc itself is non-iterative).
For ease of interpretation, the counts associated with the individual half iterations of the
outer maxSINRsym and maxMIsym iterations are separated by line breaks in the table.
The complexity associated with the Hermitian operation and the re-normalisation of the
vectors to unit norm after the (M)PM iterations is neglected. Furthermore, as maxSINRsc
and maxMIsym operate on the frequency-domain channels Hn , it is also assumed that the
matrices A and B of the algorithm maxSINRsym are evaluated in the frequency domain (see
9
Note that the overall computational complexity is dominated by complex multiplications. Each complex
multiplication requires 4 real multiplications and 2 real additions, whereas a complex addition requires only 2
real additions.
Number of Complex Multiplications [×104 ]

Number of Complex Multiplications [×104 ] 15 15
maxSINRsym maxSINRsym
maxMIsym maxMIsym
maxSINRsc maxSINRsc
10 10
NPM NPM
5 5
0 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
10 M 10 M
(a) 1 outer iteration (b) 4 outer iterations
Figure 5.3: Number of complex multiplications for maxSINRsym, maxMIsym and maxSINRsc ver-
sus array size for different numbers of (M)PM iterations (NPM = 1, 4, 6, 8), assuming
Mtx = Mrx = M , N = 64 and N −1 ≈ N .
Eqs. (A.35) and (A.36)).

To facilitate an easier comparison of the algorithmic complexities, Table 5.6(b) shows the
corresponding counts under the simplifying assumptions N −1 ≈ N and Mtx = Mrx = M . In
this symmetric MIMO case, both half-iterations have the same complexity, which is high-
lighted by the factor 2× in the table entries for maxSINRsym and maxMIsym. In Fig. 5.3,
the complex multiplication counts from Table 5.6(b) are plotted versus M for N = 64 and
NPM = 1, 4, 6 and 8. When only one outer iteration is used (see Fig. 5.3(a)), the complexity
of maxSINRsym grows much slower with M than those of the other two algorithms (e.g.
the dominating complexity term of maxSINRsc is cubic in M ). It can also be seen that
NPM has only a minor impact on the complexity of maxSINRsym. While the complexity of
maxSINRsc is clearly more affected by NPM , the curves for maxMIsym show the most drastic
changes. Table 5.6(b) reveals that all terms of maxMIsym are multiplied by NPM (recall that
the matrices C and D need to be recomputed in every MPM iteration).
In practice, multiple outer iterations are necessary to allow for convergence of maxSINR-
sym and maxMIsym. The operation counts for these algorithms scale linearly with the
number of outer iterations. Comparison of Figs. 5.3(a) and (b) confirms a scaling factor
of 4 in the considered case. In contrast, the count for maxSINRsc remains unaffected due
to the non-iterative nature of this algorithm. Furthermore, it can be seen from Fig. 5.3(b)
that maxMIsym rapidly becomes prohibitively complex for NPM > 1. Fig. 5.3(b) also shows
that there is a certain cross-over point beyond which maxSINRsym is less complex than
maxSINRsc. The location of this point depends on the system parameters M , N and the
number of outer maxSINRsym iterations. Also note that whilst NPM can be chosen as small
as one for maxSINRsym and maxMIsym (provided a sufficient number of outer iterations),
maxSINRsc requires NPM to be sufficiently large to ensure convergence of the PM to the
dominant eigenvector.
From a complexity point of view, the number of outer maxSINRsym iterations should be
kept relatively small. It should be stressed that due to a stopping criterion accuracy of 10-6 ,
the required number of outer iterations listed in Table 5.5 is larger than it would be needed in
practice. As such a high accuracy is not required for practical applications, a few iterations
should typically be sufficient.
78
Table 5.6: Number of complex multiplications and additions for maxSINRsym and maxMIsym.
(a) general case
Algorithm Multiplications Additions

2 2 2
` ´
maxSINRsym (per outer it.) N Mtx Mrx + Mtx + Mtx NPM N Mtx (Mrx −1) + (N − 1) Mtx + Mtx (Mtx −1) NPM
2 2 2
` ´
+ N Mtx Mrx + Mrx + Mrx NPM + N Mrx (Mtx −1) + (N − 1) Mrx + Mrx (Mrx −1) NPM
2 2 2
ˆ ` ´ ˜ ˆ ˜
maxMIsym (per outer it.) N Mtx Mrx + Mtx + Mtx + 3 + Mtx NPM N (Mtx (Mrx −1) + Mtx ) + (N − 1) Mtx + Mtx (Mtx −1) NPM
2 2 2
ˆ ` ´ ˜ ˆ ˜
+ N Mrx Mtx + Mrx + Mrx + 3 + Mrx NPM + N (Mrx (Mtx −1) + Mrx ) + (N − 1) Mrx + Mrx (Mrx −1) NPM
2
` 2 ´ ˆ 2 ˜
maxSINRsc N Mtx Mrx + Mtx Mrx + Mtx NPM N Mtx (Mrx −1) + Mrx (Mtx −1) + Mtx (Mtx −1) NPM
Chapter 5. Symbol–Wise Beamforming
(b) special case with Mtx = Mrx = M and N −1 ≈ N
Algorithm Multiplications Additions

` ´ ` ´
maxSINRsym (per outer it.) 2 × 2M 2 N + M 2 NPM 2 × 2M 2 N − M N + M (M − 1) NPM
`ˆ` ´ ˜ ´ `ˆ ˜ ´
maxMIsym (per outer it.) 2× 2M 2 + M + 3 N + M 2 NPM 2 × 2M 2 N + M (M − 1) NPM
` 3 ´ ˆ 3 ˜
maxSINRsc N M + M 2 + M 2 NPM N M − M + M (M − 1) NPM
5×5
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)

0.6
3×3
0.4
upper bound maxMIsym

0.2 upper bound maxSINRsym
lower bound maxSINRsym
lower bound maxMIsym
0
1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Figure 5.4: Lower and upper bounds on the mutual information CCDFs for maxSINRsym and
maxMIsym for 60 GHz PartOff B channels for different array sizes.
Finally, it should be mentioned that instead of a frequency-domain implementation of

maxSINRsym such as it was assumed in this section, this algorithm can also be implemented
in the time domain as described in Section 5.4.1. In this case, its complexity is determined
by the number of channel taps L rather than the number of subcarriers N (i.e. N needs to
be replaced by L in the corresponding entries in Table 5.6). Given that typically L < N ,
the computational requirements of a time-domain implementation of maxSINRsym would be
lower and hence, more attractive for strictly complexity-constrained mm-wave radios. Further
complexity reductions are possible, for example, by taking only a few dominant channel taps
rather than the entire CIR into account when computing u and v. However, this approach
remains a topic of future research.
Performance Comparison of maxSINRsym and maxMIsym
To confirm the usefulness of SINRpre as an optimisation criterion, the lower and upper bounds
on the mutual information CCDFs obtained from maxSINRsym are compared to the cor-
responding bounds found by maxMIsym in Fig. 5.4 (the legend entries from top to bottom
correspond to the curves in the same order). For both array sizes, the two upper bounds
are remarkably close together. On the contrary, the lower bounds are much further apart
and interestingly, maxSINRsym shows a higher worst-case performance. This behaviour can
be explained by the fact that multiple convergence levels occur much more frequently for
maxMIsym (see Table 5.4(b)). For easier readability of Fig. 5.4, the CCDFs for random
initialisations are not included. However, it should be mentioned that those curves are al-
most identical for both algorithms. Motivated by the good results achieved by maxSINRsym,
only this algorithm will be considered in the following. Furthermore, maxSINRsym will be
initialised with random v[0]. To ensure convergence, 30 eig-based iterations are used.
5.5 Numerical Results
In this section, the performance of symbol-wise BF will be investigated, using the ray-tracing-
based 60 GHz channel model from Chapter 3, as well as the Kronecker channel model from
Section 3.8. While the 60 GHz results are naturally more relevant from a practical point of
view, the Kronecker channel model enables an investigation under different degrees of spatial
correlation and frequency selectivity. For all results presented, N = 64 OFDM subcarriers
1 1
MIMO WF MIMO WF
maxSINRsc maxSINRsc
SISO 0.8 SISO
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)

Pr(I > Abcissa)
5×5 5×5
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
3×3 3×3
0.2 0.2
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
(a) NLoS (b) LoS
Figure 5.5: CCDFs of the mutual information for 60 GHz PartOff B channels and different array
sizes.
were used. The 60 GHz channel ensembles were generated using the parameters and scenarios
described in Sections 3.5 and 3.6. Results for the Kronecker channel model were obtained
for Mtx = Mrx = 3 and SNR = 10 dB, and were generated from an ensemble of 104 channel
realisations.
Primarily, subcarrier-wise BF (see Section 2.3.1) is used as reference system but in some
cases a comparison will also be made with spatial multiplexing (see Section 2.2) and conven-
tional phased-array BF [44]. Performance will be assessed in terms of mutual information
and outage capacity (see Section 2.2.1). Since the joint optimal power allocation and BF
weights remain unknown in the symbol-wise BF case, a uniform power allocation was used
for all BF results presented. It should be emphasised, however, that simulation results for
subcarrier -wise BF have shown that the performance gain due to the optimal WF allocation
is typically only minor. This can be attributed to the fact that the received S(I)NR after
transmit and receive BF is generally fairly high (especially for large antenna arrays) and thus,
the uniform power allocation approaches optimality. Applying the same argument, the effect
of the optimal power allocation in the symbol-wise BF case (if it were known) can also be
anticipated to be rather small. While most of the following sections assume the AWGN case,
the effect of co-channel interference will be investigated in Section 5.5.3.
Fig. 5.5(a) shows the CCDFs of the mutual information for maxSINRsym and maxSINRsc
BF, using three or five antennas at each link end and using only the NLoS channel realisations
of PartOff B. For reference, the CCDFs of the MIMO capacity CWF according to Eq. (2.26)
are shown. In line with the results in Chapter 4, maxSINRsc performs very close to this
upper performance limit, indicating that only little multiplexing gain is available. The mul-
tipath sparsity/high correlation of 60 GHz channels (see Section 3.7.2) are highly beneficial
for subcarrier-wise BF as most channel realisations have only one eigenmode of significant
strength per subcarrier. For details about the optimality of subcarrier-wise BF, please re-
fer to the discussion at the end of Section 2.3.1. It can also be seen from Fig. 5.5(a) that
despite its considerably lower complexity, the performance loss of maxSINRsym relative to
maxSINRsc is only small. For probabilities larger than 0.8, the gap is less than 0.35 bps/Hz
in the 3×3 case, and less than 0.5 bps/Hz in the 5×5 case. From a practical view point, this
is the most interesting region as it corresponds to outage probabilities p < 0.2. Furthermore,
both BF schemes offer significant improvements relative to a SISO system, using a uniform
power allocation. From Fig. 5.5(b), which shows the corresponding curves for the LoS case,
an even smaller relative performance loss of maxSINRsym can be observed. The LoS com-
1 ρ 1 ρ
0.8 0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)
Pr(I > Abcissa)

0.6 ρ 0.6
ρ
maxSINRsym maxSINRsc
0.4 0.4 maxSINRsym maxSINRsc
0.2 0.2
0 0
3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8
(a) Kron A (b) Kron B
Figure 5.6: Distribution of the mutual information for 3×3 two-tap Kronecker channels at
SNR = 10 dB and different levels of spatial correlation (ρ = 0, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9, 1).
ponent causes the channel to be not only less frequency-selective but also more directive and
therefore subject to increased spatial correlation. As a result, maxSINRsym performs closer
to maxSINRsc. Moreover, when compared to the SISO case, maxSINRsym offers a large gain
of almost 2.5 bps/Hz in the 3×3 case and of about 4 bps/Hz in the 5×5 case.
5.5.1 Influence of Spatial Correlation
In this section, the impact of spatial correlation on the performance on symbol-wise BF

is investigated, using the Kronecker channel model according to Section 3.8. As discussed
in Section 5.1, the performance gap between symbol-wise and subcarrier-wise BF can be
expected to decrease when the channel becomes more correlated in space. The results in
Fig. 5.6 confirm this behaviour, using the channel models (a) Kron A and (b) Kron B. Results
are included for various values of ρ and the direction of increase is indicated by the arrows.
For both channel models, the performance loss of maxSINRsym relative to maxSINRsc is
largest for ρ = 0 (about 1 bps/Hz for an outage probability of p = 0.1). This performance
gap decreases with increasing correlation and reaches its minimum in the extreme case of a
fully correlated channel (ρ = 1), which is highlighted by the thick black lines. In line with
Example 5.1, the curves for ρ = 1 actually coincide in Fig. 5.6(a) as a result of the mean DoDs
and DoAs of the model Kron A being zero on all channel taps. Furthermore, it can be seen
in Figs. 5.6(a) and (b) that the CCDFs for both BF schemes are becoming less steep as ρ
increases, indicating the reduced availability of spatial diversity.
Fig. 5.7 illustrates how the 10% outage capacity changes with increasing spatial correlation
for Kron B. In line with the results discussed previously, the gap between the BF schemes
continually decreases with growing ρ. The outage capacity of the SISO link is significantly
lower than that of both BF approaches for the entire ρ range. Along with the curves for
SISO and the two BF schemes, results are included for spatial multiplexing with or without
WF (see Section 2.2). These results highlight that the performance of spatial mutliplexing
suffers significantly from high spatial correlation, which can be attributed to a decreasing
number of channel eigenmodes being available as ρ increases. In the limit ρ → 1, the outage

7
4 MIMO WF
MIMO EP
maxSINRsc
3 maxSINRsym
SISO
2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
ρ
Figure 5.7: 10% outage capacity vs. spatial correlation parameter ρ for 3×3 Kron B channels at
SNR = 10 dB.
capacity of maxSINRsc is very close to that of MIMO with WF.10 Furthermore, it can be
seen from Fig. 5.7 that the outage capacity of MIMO with EP even drops below that of BF
once a certain ρ threshold is exceeded. Whilst MIMO with WF allocates less power to weak
eigenmodes, MIMO with EP is unable to do so.
The performance gap between the two BF schemes can be explained with the maxSINRsc
weight vectors on different subcarriers becoming more dissimilar when spatial correlation
decreases. To measure the similarity, let the correlation of the vectors v n (and analogously
of un ) as a function of the subcarrier distance ∆n be defined as
n o
ρv (∆n) = E v †n+∆n v n . (5.30)
In order for this measure to be meaningful, all v n are rotated such that the first element is
real-valued.11 The absolute value of ρv is plotted in Fig. 5.8 versus ∆n. It can be clearly
seen that |ρv | drops off fastest when the channel is spatially uncorrelated. On the other
extreme, a fully correlated channel causes the BF vectors to be highly correlated even for
large ∆n. Since the correlation properties of un are very similar, the corresponding results
are not shown.
5.5.2 Influence of Frequency–Selectivity
To investigate the effect of different levels of frequency selectivity, the spatially uncorrelated
Kron D channel with L = 12 taps and exponential PDP is used (see Section 3.8). The 10%
outage capacity is plotted in Fig. 5.9 as a function of the delay spread parameter Kσ in
multiples of the symbol period. As expected from Section 5.1, the performance loss of symbol-
wise BF relative to subcarrier-wise BF is zero on a flat channel and then gradually grows
with increasing frequency selectivity. An increase of outage capacity with growing delay
spread can be observed for maxSINRsc, SISO, and MIMO with or without WF. The reason
is a reduced number of outages due to a higher degree of frequency diversity (for the MIMO
10
Note that the optimality of BF in the limit of full correlation that has been reported in [75] (also see
discussion at the end of Section 2.3.1) does not hold here. The results in [75] were obtained for the special
case where the transmit and receive correlation matrices remain fixed across the entire frequency band (see
comments in Section 3.8). In the more general case of frequency-dependent correlation matrices, the asymptotic
optimality no longer holds.
11
The vectors that maximise SINRn are not unique. If v n is optimal, then so is v n ejϕ for arbitrary ϕ. This
can easily be verified by substituting v n ejϕ into Eq. (5.12). The same applies to un .
0.8

ρv (∆n)
0.6
ρ
0.4
0.2
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Subcarrier Distance ∆n
Figure 5.8: Optimal BF vector correlation vs. subcarrier distance ∆n for 3×3 Kron B channels at
SNR = 10 dB and different levels of spatial correlation (ρ between 0 and 1 in steps of 0.1).
9
8
7
6
5
4 MIMO WF
MIMO EP
maxSINRsc
3 maxSINRsym
SISO
2
1
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Kσ [symbol periods]
Figure 5.9: 10% outage capacity vs. delay spread parameter Kσ for spatially uncorrelated 3×3 Kron
D channels at SNR = 10 dB.
case this was reported in [54]). In contrast, maxSINRsym experiences the opposite effect.
Although an increase in diversity can be inferred from a steepening of the mutual information
CCDFs,12 it becomes increasingly difficult for the algorithm to match the vectors u and v
to all subcarrier channels. Again, this effect can be illustrated by observing the correlation
properties of the maxSINRsc BF vectors according to Eq. (5.30). Fig. 5.10 reveals that the
optimal vectors v n decorrelate much faster across the band when Kσ is large.
5.5.3 Influence of Co–Channel Interference
While the previous results assumed the AWGN case, the presence of co-channel interference
is considered in this section, assuming an interfering terminal that uses a single antenna and
does not cooperate with the transmitter.13 Let the combined effect of interference and noise
12
This effect is similar to the steepening due to spatial diversity observed in Fig. 5.6. The curves are omitted
here due to space limitations.
13
The single-antenna assumption was made for simplicity. If the interfering terminal also uses BF, the
effective channel after transmit BF is vector-valued and the receiver “sees” a single-antenna interferer. Fur-
thermore, the interference model can easily be generalised to multiple interferers.
0.8

ρv (∆n)
0.6
0.4

Kσ
0.2
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Subcarrier Distance ∆n
Figure 5.10: Optimal BF vector correlation vs. subcarrier distance ∆n for spatially uncorrelated
3×3 Kron D channels for different delay spreads (Kσ between 0 and 3 in steps of 0.5)
at SNR = 10 dB.
on subcarrier n be modelled by
Wn = Hint,n Xn + Z n , (5.31)
P int −1 n
where Hint,n = L l=0 hint,l e−j2πl N is the channel from the interferer to the receiver, with
hint,l ∈ CMrx ×1 being the lth tap of Lint channel taps. Furthermore, Xn denotes the interfering
symbol and Z n i.i.d. zero-mean circularly-symmetric complex Gaussian noise with covariance
2I
matrix σw Mrx . The symbols Xn are assumed to be i.i.d. zero-mean circularly-symmetric
complex Gaussian with variance E |Xn |2 = σint 2 . Under the additional assumption that X

n
and Z n are mutually uncorrelated, Wn is uncorrelated across subcarriers and from Eq. (5.31),
its covariance matrix is found as
n o
RW n = E W n W †n = σint 2
Hint,n H†int,n + σw
2
I Mrx . (5.32)
Applying an IDFT to W n yields the time-domain interference-plus-noise vector w[k]. Omit-

ting details, its covariance matrix Rw is found as
n o int −1
LX
† 2
Rw = E w[k]w [k] = σint hint,l h†int,l + σz2 I Mrx . (5.33)
l=0
2 , where
Furthermore, let the average signal-to-interference ratio be defined as SIR = Ps /σint
Ps is the average power per time-domain symbol (see Section 2.1).
For the results presented in the following, the channel H l was modelled by the 2-tap
model Kron B, which assumes a uniform PDP. Also assuming Lint = 2 taps and uniform
PDP for the interfering channel, hint,l was modelled by Kron C with receive correlation
matrix Rint,rx,l . Since the interfering signal arrives at the same antenna array as the desired
signal, it is reasonable to assume a common correlation parameter ρrx for Rint,rx,l and Rrx,l .
However, the mean DoAs of desired and interfering signal will generally be different, giving
rise to the phases of the correlation matrix entries being different. Whilst the mean DoAs
of Kron B are chosen from a uniform distribution between ±30◦ , they are drawn uniformly
at random from the range 60◦ to 120◦ for Kron C. Note that interference suppression can
generally be expected to be more difficult when the desired and interfering signals arrive from
similar directions.
In addition to the BF schemes discussed previously, conventional phased-array BF [44]
will be considered in the following. The general structure of a communications system using
6 6
5 5

4 4
3 maxSINRsc 3 maxSINRsc
maxSNRsym maxSNRsym
Phased Array Phased Array
2 2
SISO SISO
1 1
0 0
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
SIR [dB] SIR [dB]
(a) Moderate spatial correlation (ρ = 0.6). (b) High spatial correlation (ρ = 0.99).
Figure 5.11: 10% outage capacity vs. SIR for 3×3 two-tap equal-gain Rayleigh channels at
SNR = 10 dB.
phased-array BF at both link ends is the same as for symbol-wise BF (see Fig. 2.3 on page
25) but the vectors u and v are restricted to
−1/2 T
v = Mtx 1 ejψ . . . ej(Mtx −1)ψ (5.34)
−1/2
T
1 ejξ . . . ej(Mrx −1)ξ

u = Mrx (5.35)
with two independent phase shifts ψ and ξ. For the results presented, the best combination of
ψ and ξ was found by means of an exhaustive search, quantising the phase shifts such that the
beam direction can be steered with 7.5◦ resolution,14 assuming uniform linear arrays and om-
nidirectional antenna elements with half wavelength spacing. For all possible combinations,
SINRpre was evaluated and ψ and ξ corresponding to the maximum were selected.
Fig. 5.11 shows the extent at which the different BF schemes can mitigate interference
of varying strength. The 10% outage capacity is plotted as a function of the SIR for (a)
moderate and (b) high spatial correlation. Note that the interference gets stronger from
the right to the left. In both cases maxSINRsc copes best and is able to maintain an al-
most constant outage capacity even for high interference levels. The relative performance
loss of maxSINRsym increases with increasing interference power since this scheme cannot
suppress the interference on a subcarrier-by-subcarrier basis. Nevertheless, maxSINRsym
clearly outperforms maxSNRsym, SISO and also phased-array BF. The outage capacity of
these approaches deteriorates much more quickly. Comparison of the two symbol-wise BF
schemes highlights how beneficial it is to take interference into account when optimising u
and v. The behaviour is also interesting for phased-array BF. The reduced flexibility of how
to choose u and v significantly limits its ability to mitigate interference and to exploit spatial
diversity. Particularly for high SIR and moderate correlation, the performance gap between
symbol-wise and phased-array BF indicates the reduced spatial diversity gain. In contrast,
the gap is much smaller in the highly correlated case shown in Fig. 5.11 (b). Due to high
correlation, very little spatial diversity is available. With decreasing SIR, phased-array BF
actually outperforms maxSNRsym as a result of its interference awareness (recall that ψ and
ξ are found by maximising SINRpre ). The results for the highly correlated case also show that
maxSINRsym performs quite close to maxSINRsc. As long as SIR > 0 dB, the outage capacity
loss is within 0.5 bps/Hz.
14
This was found to be a good complexity/accuracy trade-off for the presented simulations. Note, however,
that the exhaustive search is still prohibitively complex for any practical phased-array BF implementation.
3 6
maxSINRsc
maxSINRsym 5×5

maxSNRsym
2.5 SISO 5
5×5
2 4
3×3
1.5 3
1 2
3×3
0.5 1 maxSINRsc
maxSINRsym
maxSNRsym
SISO
0 0
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
SIR [dB] SIR [dB]
(a) NLoS (b) LoS
Figure 5.12: 10% outage capacity vs. SIR for 60 GHz PartOff B channels and different array sizes.
Transmitter and interfering terminal are located at positions Tx1 and Tx2 of PartOff
B.
The corresponding set of curves for 60 GHz channels is shown in Fig. 5.12, using 3×3 and
5×5 MIMO arrays. The desired transmitter was assumed to be situated at location Tx1 of
scenario PartOff B, while the interfering channel hint,l was obtained for location Tx2 (see
Fig. 3.5(b) on p.39). The results in Fig. 5.12(a) are using only the NLoS realisations. The
observations are mostly in line with the Kronecker channel results: maxSINRsc performs best
and as long as the interference is weak, both symbol-wise BF schemes show quite similar per-
formance. For both array sizes, the advantage of maxSINRsym becomes much more obvious
at moderate to high interference levels, and it manages to maintain an outage capacity clearly
above those of maxSNRsym and the SISO system. For the LoS channels (see Fig. 5.12(b)),
the gap between maxSINRsc and maxSINRsym at low interference levels is smaller than in
the NLoS case. Due to a lower level of frequency-selectivity, as well as increased spatial
correlation, the relative performance loss of maxSINRsym is less pronounced. Again it can
be observed that maxSINRsym clearly outperforms the SISO system and also maxSNRsym,
both of which do not take the interference into account.
5.6 Summary
This chapter has introduced important performance limits for symbol-wise BF approaches.
Their development was motivated by the fact that the upper bound on the mutual information
of subcarrier-wise BF systems is generally loose when applied to the symbol-wise BF case.
Analysis in this chapter revealed that maximisation of the mutual information in closed form is
intractable in the context of symbol-wise BF. Furthermore, the objective function was shown
to be non-concave, ruling out a numerical maximisation via convex optimisation techniques.
The situation was found to be similar when considering SINRpre , the SINR before OFDM
demodulation, as an alternative optimisation criterion. However, in this case, a numerical
solution was derived based on the method of Lagrange multipliers for the general case where
the channel is subject to co-channel interference. The solution is computed by solving a pair
of coupled eigenproblems (one of them a generalised eigenproblem) in iterative fashion. The
corresponding algorithm maxSINRsym is guaranteed to converge and extensive Monte-Carlo
simulations showed that it generally converges to the global maximum or a solution in its
close vicinity.
5.6. Summary 87
When revisiting the two conditions for maximum mutual information, they were also
found to resemble some similarity with an eigenproblem in the special case where co-channel
interference is absent. However, in contrast to the SINRpre case, a non-linear dependence on
the eigenvectors required application of the MPM instead of conventional EVD methods.
The resulting iterative algorithm maxMIsym and maxSINRsym not only exhibit a similar
convergence behaviour, but also yield virtually identical solutions. As maxSINRsym is char-
acterised by considerably lower computational complexity, this algorithm enables a more
efficient bound computation. Furthermore, maxSINRsym (particularly when implemented
via the PM) is a highly attractive candidate for the computation of the symbol-wise BF
vectors in practical 60 GHz transceivers, where low implementation complexity, processing
delay and power consumption are necessary.
Whilst a performance degradation of symbol-wise BF relative to subcarrier-wise BF is
inevitable, analysis and computer simulations indicated this penalty to reduce with decreas-
ing frequency selectivity or increasing spatial correlation. In line with the exceptionally high
levels of spatial correlation that were observed for typical 60 GHz channels, the relative per-
formance loss was found to be comparably small, rendering symbol-wise BF highly suitable
for mm-wave communications. Furthermore, in the presence of co-channel interference, the
proposed algorithm maxSINRsym was shown to clearly outperform its interference-unaware
counterpart maxSNRsym and phased-array BF.
Chapter 6
Beamforming Extensions
Symbol-wise BF approaches were found to be highly attractive due to their low computational
complexity. However, keeping the symbol-wise BF vectors constant across all subcarriers
results in a loss of degrees of freedom, which in turn gives rise to deteriorating performance.
Whilst it was demonstrated in Chapter 5 that this performance penalty is typically small
for 60 GHz channels, it can be considerable in general MIMO-OFDM channels. Specifically,
results in Chapter 5 have shown the performance loss of symbol-wise BF relative to subcarrier-
wise BF to grow with decreasing spatial correlation or increasing frequency selectivity. Is
there a way to extend symbol-wise BF such that some of this loss can be recovered, while still
keeping the complexity below that of subcarrier-wise BF? This chapter addresses this question
by exploring various extensions to symbol-wise BF that re-introduced some of the lost degrees
of freedom without losing sight of the requirement for low computational complexity.
Two alternative approaches are considered. First, the application of existing symbol-wise
BF schemes to groups of subcarriers rather than the entire frequency band is investigated
in Section 6.1. Then, in Section 6.2, hybrid BF systems are considered, where one terminal
performs BF in a subcarrier-by-subcarrier fashion, whereas the second terminal employs
symbol-wise BF. Such hybrid schemes target asymmetric communication systems, where one
of the terminals (typically the access point or base station) can handle larger computational
loads.
6.1 Subcarrier–Group–Wise Beamforming
A straightforward extension to symbol-wise BF is to use one set of fixed transmit and re-
ceive BF weights on the subcarriers in the lower half of the frequency band, while using a
separate set on the remaining subcarriers. As the weights can be chosen independently in
both subbands (orthogonality of the subcarriers), this approach adds one degree of freedom.
In the general case, subcarrier subsets Nq ⊂ N = {0, . . . , N −1} are assigned to Ngrp sub-
carrier groups, where q = 1, . . . , Ngrp is the group index, Nq = |Nq | the cardinality of the
SNgrp
subsets, and where q=1 Nq = N and 1 6 Ngrp 6 N . Independent BF weights ugrp,q and
v grp,q are used for each of the groups. Assigning adjacent subcarriers to each group seems
reasonable as they will generally exhibit stronger correlation in frequency (cf. results in Sec-
tions 5.5.1 and 5.5.2). Note, however, that this heuristic approach is not guaranteed to be
optimal. While optimal subcarrier allocation has been considered in the context of multi-user
OFDMA (see Section 6.1.1), it remains an open research topic in the subcarrier-group-wise
BF case. Fig. 6.1(a) illustrates the concept of subcarrier-group-wise BF at the example of
90 Chapter 6. Beamforming Extensions
1 2 … Ngrp
Null symbols
N −N1 N
j=1
v grp,1
…
DEMUX &
IDFT
…
CP insertion
…
Ngrp MUX
N1 j=2
…
…
MUX
NNgrp
…
N
v grp,Ngrp
…
MUX DEMUX &
IDFT
…
CP insertion
…
N −NNgrp j=Mtx
Null symbols
1 2 … Ngrp
(a) Transmitter
Discard symbols
N −N1 N
i=1
ugrp,1
…
CP removal
DFT
…
…
& MUX
…
Ngrp DEMUX
N1 i=2
…
…
DEMUX
NNgrp
…
N
ugrp,Ngrp
…
DEMUX CP removal
DFT
…
…
& MUX
…
N −NNgrp i=Mrx
Discard symbols
(b) Receiver
Figure 6.1: Subcarrier-group-wise BF
transmit BF. First, the input symbol stream is assigned to Ngrp separate streams, each of
which is multiplexed across Nq adjacent subcarriers. The remaining subcarriers are filled
with null symbols. After undergoing an IDFT, demultiplexing and CP insertion, the signals
are passed on to Ngrp BF stages. The spectral occupancy of the signals at the input of these
BF stages is indicated in Fig. 6.1(a). Finally, transmission occurs form Mtx separate anten-
nas, each of which is fed by the coherent sum of the Ngrp signals destined for this particular
antenna. The receiver basically performs the inverse process as shown in Fig. 6.1(b). Note
that symbols which are received on subcarriers not part of the group of interest are simply
discarded.
Due to the orthogonality of the subcarriers (see Section 2.1.2), there is no interaction
or interference between the Ngrp groups and hence, they can be treated individually when
optimising ugrp,q and v grp,q . Therefore, any algorithm that computes the weights for symbol-
wise BF can also be used for subcarrier-group-wise BF by applying it to each subcarrier
group. Specifically, the iterative solutions derived in Section 5.4 represent highly attractive
choices with low complexity.
From Fig. 6.1, it can be seen that the number of DFTs per terminal equals Ngrp . On
the contrary, their number is determined by the number of antenna elements in the case of
subcarrier-wise BF (see Fig. 2.2 on p.20). Therefore, subcarrier-group-wise BF is primarily
attractive when using large antenna arrays. However, the next section considers the applica-
tion of subcarrier-group-wise BF to a multi-user scenario, where each user terminal needs to
be equipped with only one DFT processor.
6.1. Subcarrier–Group–Wise Beamforming 91
Null symbols j=1

N −N1 N j=2
v grp,1
…
DEMUX &
…
IDFT CP insertion
…
…
user 1 MUX
N1
j=Mtx
(a) Transmitter (example for user terminal 1)
Discard symbols
N −N1 N
i=1
ugrp,1
…
CP removal
DFT
…
& MUX
user 1 DEMUX …
N1 i=2
…
…
NNgrp
…
N
ugrp,Ngrp
user Ngrp
…
DEMUX CP removal
…
DFT
…
& MUX
…
N −NNgrp i=Mrx
Discard symbols
(b) Receiver
Figure 6.2: OFDMA-based BF
6.1.1 Application to OFDMA
In an orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) system, the wireless medium

is shared among multiple users by assigning them disjoint subsets of subcarriers1 [122]. The
optimal power and subcarrier allocation in OFDMA systems is a non-trivial problem that has
been considered in numerous research papers (e.g. see [122,121,123]). For simplicity, identical
transmit powers per user are assumed, which are evenly shared across each user’s subcarriers.
Furthermore, it is assumed that each user is assigned a contiguous group of subcarriers. In this
case, subcarrier-group-wise BF for single-user systems can be readily extended to the OFDMA
case. Considering, for example, the uplink from multiple user terminals to an access point or
base station, each user terminal implements only one branch of the transmitter architecture
in Fig. 6.1(a), resulting in the architecture shown in Fig. 6.2(a). Thus, each user terminal
performs only a single IDFT regardless of the number of users. Each of the transmitted
signals is characterised by a partial spectral occupancy, whereas the received signal occupies
the entire frequency band and is processed by the receiver depicted in Fig. 6.2(b). Therefore,
most of the processing is carried out at the access point/base station.
Although only the uplink has been considered in the previous discussion, the same princi-
ple also applies to the downlink transmission to multiple users. In this case, the transmitter
applies designated BF vectors to the individual user data streams. Each user terminal then
passes the received OFDM signal through its receive BF stage and discards all symbols in-
tended for other users.
6.1.2 Numerical Results
The results presented in this section were obtained from 104 realisations of a spatially uncor-
related 3×3 Kron D channel (see Section 3.8), using an exponential PDP with delay spread
parameter Kσ = 2Ts . This channel model was selected as the absence of spatial correla-
tion and the comparably high level of frequency selectivity result in a large performance
1
Note that it is also possible to share individual subcarriers between multiple users [121]. However, for
simplicity, this will not be considered here.
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa) Ngrp
0.6
0.4
maxSINRsc
maxSINRsym
0.2
maxSINRsym group-wise
SISO
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Figure 6.3: Mutual information CCDFs for subcarrier-group-wise BF with Ngrp = 1, 2, 4, 8, 64 for
spatially uncorrelated 3×3 Kron D channels with 12 taps, exponential PDP and Kσ = 2Ts
at SNR = 10 dB.
gap between symbol-wise and subcarrier-wise BF (cf. results in Sections 5.5.1 and 5.5.2).
Fig. 6.3 shows the mutual information CCDFs for different numbers of subcarrier groups,
assuming for simplicity a constant number of subcarriers per group, i.e. Nq = N/Ngrp for all
q. The results clearly show that the performance loss relative to maxSINRsc BF decreases
with growing Ngrp . At the same time, the incremental gain reduces. While the largest gain
increment can be observed when Ngrp is increased from one to two, already Ngrp = 4 bridges
more than half the gap to maxSINRsc. Note that Ngrp = 1 corresponds to symbol-wise BF.
Furthermore, it can be seen in Fig. 6.3 that the performance in the extreme case Ngrp = 64
coincides with that of the optimal subcarrier-wise BF algorithm maxSINRsc. Of course, this
case is not of practical interest: implementing subcarrier-wise BF is much more attractive
than carrying out 64 DFTs for subcarrier-group-wise BF.
While the previous results were obtained for a single-user channel, Fig. 6.4 shows the
corresponding results for an OFDMA system with Ngrp users, assuming that all user signals
are received synchronously. The CCDFs were obtained using the sum rate of the OFDMA
system, i.e. the total data rate of all users, which is given by [121]
Ngrp
X X 1
I (ugrp,q , v grp,q ) = log2 (1 + SINRq,n (ugrp,q , v grp,q )) , (6.1)
N
q=1 n∈Nq
where, with a slight abuse of notation, the symbol I for the mutual information was re-used.
Furthermore, SINRq,n corresponds to the SINR of the q th user on subcarrier n, which is defined
in analogy to SINRep,n in Eq. (2.37). The mutual information CCDFs for the single-user case
are included for comparison in Fig. 6.4 (solid curves). Note that for the computer simulations,
independent channel realisations where selected for each user to reflect the spatial separation
of the user terminals. The general trend of increasing performance with growing Ngrp can also
be observed in the OFDMA case. Interestingly, Fig. 6.4 reveals a steeping of the CCDFs with
an increasing number of users. With an almost step-like CCDF, this effect is most obvious for
Ngrp = 64, where each user gets assigned only one subcarrier. The steepening of the CCDFs
hints at a higher degree of frequency diversity, which is due to the fact that each user “sees” a
different channel (multi-user diversity). In other words, the channel is continuous across the
subcarriers in each group, whilst it is discontinuous where the subcarrier groups are joined
together. Effectively, averaging occurs across different channel realisations. The unpractical
choice of one subcarrier per user completely removes the correlation across subcarriers and
6.2. Asymmetric Beamforming Systems 93
0.8
Ngrp
Pr(I > Abcissa)

0.6
0.4
0.2 maxSINRsym OFDMA

maxSINRsym group-wise
SISO
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Figure 6.4: Mutual information CCDFs for OFDMA-based and subcarrier-group-wise BF with
Ngrp = 1, 2, 4, 8, 64 for spatially uncorrelated 3×3 Kron D channels with 12 taps, ex-
ponential PDP and Kσ = 2Ts at SNR = 10 dB.
hence, results in the highest possible multi-user diversity. On the other hand, the steepening
does not occur for the single-user scenario as in this case, the channel is continuous across
subcarrier groups.
6.2 Asymmetric Beamforming Systems
Up to now, only symmetric BF systems, which employ the same BF technique at both ter-
minals, have been considered. However, in practical situations, transmitter and receiver are
often asymmetric: access points or base stations can usually afford a considerably higher
complexity than low-cost battery-powered devices. Motivated by this observation, the case
where one of the terminals performs subcarrier-wise BF and the second terminal performs
symbol-wise BF is considered in this section. The asymmetric computational load is high-
lighted by the fact that only one DFT is needed at the terminal fitted with the symbol-wise
BF stage, whereas the number of DFTs required for subcarrier-wise BF equals the number
of antenna elements (see Section 2.3). In the following sections, the weight optimisation in
the context of these asymmetric BF systems will be considered using a maximum mutual
information criterion.2
6.2.1 Symbol–Wise Transmit and Subcarrier–Wise Receive BF
Consider a MIMO system that performs symbol-wise transmit BF and subcarrier-wise receive
BF. The mutual information of such a system can be found from Eq. (2.39) with v n = v for
all n. The resulting optimisation problem can be posed as3
N −1
!
X 1 u†n Hn vv † H†n un
maximise I (un , v) = log2 1 + Ps
un ,v
n=0
N u†n RW n un
2
Note that time-domain metrics such as SINRpre (see Section 5.3) are not useful for the optimisation of
hybrid subcarrier-wise and symbol-wise BF schemes. This is due to the fact that the subcarrier-wise BF
vectors are frequency-domain quantities and hence, do not occur explicitly in time-domain expressions.
3
Similar to Section 5.2, the optimal transmit BF vector and the optimal power allocation are linked, which
renders their joint optimisation infeasible. Therefore, a uniform power allocation with µn = 1 for all n is
assumed in this section.
subject to v † v 6 1 (6.2)
and the corresponding Lagrangian is given by

LI (un , v, ζ) = I (un , v) − ζ v † v − 1 . (6.3)
Omitting details as the steps are essentially identical to those in Section 5.2.1,
1 Ps Hn v̂v̂ † H†n ûn

=
N log 2 û† R † †
n W n + Ps Hn v̂v̂ Hn ûn
†
H†n ûn
†
1 Ps ûnûH† nRv̂v̂
n W n ûn
RW n ûn (6.4)
N log 2 û† R † †
n W n + Ps Hn v̂v̂ Hn ûn
is found from ∇un LI = 0, using Eq. (6.3). Cancelling common terms then yields

Hn v̂v̂ † H†n ûn = γn RW n ûn (6.5)
û†n Hn v̂v̂ † H†n ûn
with γn = , (6.6)
û†n RW n ûn
which is a generalised eigenproblem with eigenvalue γn and eigenvector ûn . Left-multiplying
−1/2
Eq. (6.5) with RW n results in

−1/2 −1/2 1/2 −1/2 1/2
RW n Hn v̂v̂ † H†n RW n RW n ûn = γn RW n RW n ûn = γn RW n ûn . (6.7)
| {z }
I Mrx
−1/2 −1/2
Noting that the matrix RW n Hn v̂v̂ † H†n RW n has unit rank and that the eigenvector corre-
−1/2
sponding to its non-zero eigenvalue is RW n Hn v̂, it is easily verified that Eq. (6.7) requires
1/2 −1/2
RW n ûn ∝ RW n Hn v̂ (6.8)
to be satisfied, which in turn implies
ûn ∝ R−1
W n Hn v̂. (6.9)
Setting the gradient ∇v LI of the Lagrangian in Eq. (6.3) with respect to v equal to zero
results in (for details, see the analogous derivations in Section 5.2.1)
N −1
1 X Ps H†n ûn û†n Hn v̂
= ζ̂ v̂. (6.10)
N log 2 û †
R + P H v̂v̂ † †
H û
n=0 n Wn s n n n
Substituting for ûn by its closed-form solution according to Eq. (6.9) yields the non-linear
eigenproblem
C(v̂) v̂ = ζ̂ v̂ (6.11)
−1
1
N
Ps H†n R−1 Hn v̂v̂ † H†n R−1
W n Hn
Wn
X
with C(v̂) = . (6.12)
N log 2 † † −1 † † −1
n=0 v̂ Hn RW n RW n + Ps Hn v̂v̂ Hn RW n Hn v̂
Whilst conventional EVD methods cannot be applied due to the non-linearity in v̂, the
dominant eigenvector of C(v̂) can be computed numerically using the MPM as described in
Section 5.4.2. The mutual information of the considered BF system is therefore maximised
by the following procedure: in a first step, the optimal vector v̂ is computed from Eq. (6.11)
via the MPM. Using the resulting solution, the optimal receive BF vectors ûn are then found
from Eq. (6.9). This solution will subsequently be referred to as maxMI-symTx-scRx.
For the special case of RW n = σw2I
Mrx , i.e. the AWGN case without co-channel interfer-
ence, it can be shown that Eq. (6.11) can be rewritten as C(v̂)
e v̂ = ζ̂ v̂, where the simplified
matrix C is given by
e
N −1
SNR X H†n Hn
C(v̂)
e = . (6.13)
N log 2
n=0
1 + SNR v̂ † H†n Hn v̂
Note that the solution for this special case is covered by the algorithm proposed in [120],
where cyclic transmit BF filters are used in conjunction with subcarrier-wise receive BF.
Symbol-wise BF can be interpreted as a cyclic BF filter with a single tap.
6.2.2 Subcarrier–Wise Transmit and Symbol–Wise Receive BF
A similar solution to that derived in the previous section can also be found in the case of
subcarrier-wise transmit and symbol-wise receive BF. This solution, which will be referred
to as maxMI-scTx-symRx , is derived in the following. After substituting v n = v into the
expression for the mutual information according to Eq. (2.39), the optimisation problem can
be written as
N −1
!
X 1 u† Hn v n v †n H†n u
maximise I (u, v n ) = log2 1 + Ps
u,v n N u† RW n u
n=0
subject to v †n v n 6 1. (6.14)
Taking into account that there is one constraint per subcarrier, the Lagrangian associated
with Eq. (6.14) is found as
N
X −1
LI (u, v n , ζn ) = I (u, v n ) − ζn v †n v n − 1 . (6.15)
n=0
Setting the gradient of LI with respect to v n to zero yields the eigenproblem associated
with the unit-rank matrix H†n ûû† Hn . Noting the eigenvector corresponding to the non-zero
eigenvalue of this matrix points in the direction of H†n û, the closed-form solution
H† û H†n û
v̂ n = †n = q (6.16)
Hn û
û† Hn H†n û
is obtained, where the normalisation ensures that the eigenvector v̂ n has unit norm.
Taking the gradient of the Lagrangian in Eq. (6.15) with respect to u and setting it to
zero results in
N −1
Ps X Hn v̂ n v̂ †n H†n û
=
N log 2 †
RW n + Ps Hn v̂ n v̂ †n H†n û
n=0 û
N −1 û† Hn v̂ n v̂ † H†n û
n
Ps X û† RW n û
RW n û. (6.17)
N log 2 †
RW n + Ps Hn v̂ n v̂ †n H†n û
n=0 û
After replacing v̂ n by its closed-form expression in Eq. (6.16) and some tedious arithmetic
manipulations, the simplified expression reads
N −1
Ps X Hn H†n
û =
N log 2
n=0
û† RW n + Ps Hn H†n û
N −1 û† H H† û
n n
Ps X û† RW n û
RW n û. (6.18)
N log 2
n=0
û† RW n + Ps Hn H†n û
Solving this expression for arbitrary RW n appears to be not possible. However, in the AWGN
case with RW n = σw 2I
Mrx , Eq. (6.18) simplifies to
D(û) û = γ û (6.19)
N −1
SNR X Hn H†n
with D(û) = (6.20)
N log 2
n=0
û† û + SNR û† Hn H†n û
N −1 û† Hn H†n û
SNR X
û† û
and γ = , (6.21)
N log 2
n=0
û† û + SNR û Hn H†n û
†
where γ is a real-valued scalar. Eq. (6.19) is a non-linear eigenproblem and the dominant
eigenvector û can be found numerically using the MPM.
6.2.3 Numerical Results
Fig. 6.5 shows the performance of asymmetric BF systems over three different types of stochas-
tic 3×3 channels. As a reference, results are also included for symmetric BF systems (symbol-
wise and subcarrier-wise BF) and a SISO link. The CCDFs of the mutual information in
Fig. 6.5(a) were obtained from an ensemble of 104 Kron D channels with a delay spread
parameter Kσ = 2Ts (see Section 3.8). The MPCs are departing in/arriving from arbitrary
directions, i.e. DoDs and DoAs are distributed uniformly between zero and 360◦ . It can be
seen that for these spatially uncorrelated channels, the curves for maxMI-scTx-symRx and
maxMI-symTx-scRx coincide. Due to the absence of spatial correlation, the channel does not
impose any preference on which of the two terminals should be equipped with a subcarrier-
wise BF stage. As intuitively expected, the CCDFs for the asymmetric BF systems lie in
between the curves for maxSINRsym and maxSINRsc.
The corresponding set of curves for the Kron E channel defined in Section 3.8 is shown
in Fig. 6.5(b). Like Kron D, this channel has 12 exponentially decaying taps with Kσ =
2Ts . However, Kron E is characterised by a smaller spread of the DoDs. For each channel
realisation, the DoD of each channel tap is drawn independently from a uniform distribution
in the range ±30◦ . As small angular spread typically results in high spatial correlation, the
transmit-side correlation parameter was set to ρtx = 0.9. The results in Fig. 6.5(b) show that
for this channel, maxMI-symTx-scRx clearly outperforms maxMI-scTx-symRx: the larger
degree of freedom of subcarrier-wise BF is more beneficial at the receiver, where MPCs
arrive from arbitrary directions and where spatial correlation is absent. When the terminals
swap their role, the channel conditions are reversed, i.e. now the spatial correlation at the
receiving terminal is high and the angular spread low. Consequently, maxMI-scTx-symRx
can be expected to outperform maxMI-symTx-scRx in this case. This behaviour is confirmed
by the results in Fig. 6.5(c), which were generated from Kron F channels with ρrx = 0.9 and
DoAs drawn uniformly at random from the range ±30◦ (see Section 3.8).
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)

0.6
0.4 maxSINRsc
maxMI-scTx-symRx
maxMI-symTx-scRx
0.2
maxSINRsym
SISO
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

(a) Kron D, no spatial correlation (ρtx = ρrx = 0)
1
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)
0.6
0.4 maxSINRsc
maxMI-scTx-symRx
maxMI-symTx-scRx
0.2
maxSINRsym
SISO
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

(b) Kron E, spatial transmit correlation (ρtx = 0.9, ρrx = 0)
1
0.8
Pr(I > Abcissa)
0.6
0.4 maxSINRsc
maxMI-scTx-symRx
maxMI-symTx-scRx
0.2
maxSINRsym
SISO
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
(c) Kron F, spatial receive correlation (ρtx = 0, ρrx = 0.9)
Figure 6.5: Mutual information CCDFs for asymmetric BF systems for 3×3 Kronecker channels
with 12 taps, exponential PDP and Kσ = 2Ts at SNR = 10 dB.
6.3 Summary
In this chapter, a number of extensions to symbol-wise BF were suggested. First, the appli-
cation of existing symbol-wise BF algorithms to groups of subcarriers rather than the entire
frequency band was considered. This approach allows to flexibly trade off performance and
computational complexity within the limits of symbol-wise and subcarrier-wise BF. Primar-
ily, the number of subcarrier groups determines the complexity (a dedicated DFT processor
is required per group and terminal) and hence, should be kept reasonably small. However,
when large antenna arrays are used, subcarrier-group-wise BF still has the potential to avoid
the significant overhead that would be introduced by subcarrier-wise BF due to the need for
one DFT per antenna element.
The inherent subcarrier grouping in OFDMA systems, where subsets of subcarriers are
assigned to different users, also suggested the application of subcarrier-group-wise BF to these
systems. The resulting complexity increase in the user terminals was found to be only small.
In fact, no additional DFTs are required compared to a single-antenna user terminal. Most of
the processing is carried out by the access point/base station, where a higher implementation
complexity is acceptable.
In the second part of this chapter, hybrid BF approaches that perform subcarrier-wise BF
at one end of the communications link and symbol-wise BF at the other end were considered.
Due to the asymmetric computational load, this approach is well-suited when only one of
the terminals is strictly limited in its processing power. In this context, two novel algorithms
for the antenna weight computation were derived based on a maximum mutual information
criterion. Whilst the weights for the terminal that performs subcarrier-wise BF were found in
closed form, the symbol-wise BF vector needs to be computed numerically using the MPM.
Computer simulations showed that these asymmetric BF solutions are useful in situations,
where either the transmit or the receive side is subject to high spatial correlation. Results
confirm that in this case, it is more beneficial to use subcarrier-wise BF at the link end that
exhibits lower correlation.
It should also be mentioned that in the asymmetric BF case, the symbol-wise BF stage
can readily be replaced by subcarrier-group-wise BF.
Chapter 7
Conclusions
This thesis has provided new insight into the capabilities of different multi-antenna techniques
applied to mm-wave communications. Specifically, the amount of multiplexing and array
gain available on typical 60 GHz MIMO-OFDM channels has been explored. In the context
of joint transmit and receive BF systems, novel performance bounds have been introduced
that provide the ability to benchmark symbol-wise BF algorithms. These bounds also apply
to the special case, where phased-array BF is used at both ends of the communications link.
This thesis opened in Chapter 1 with an overview of mm-wave communications, a tech-
nology that has received enormous attention in recent years as it has the potential to imple-
ment multi-Gbps wireless indoor communication services. The discussion in this chapter has
identified the need for a comprehensive study of the capabilities and potential of different
MIMO-based signalling schemes for 60 GHz communications. The chapter then concluded
with an overview of multi-antenna techniques, focussing on spatial multiplexing and BF.
Chapter 2 laid the foundations for assessing the performance of antenna-array-based tech-
niques such as spatial multiplexing or joint transmit and receive BF. At the beginning of the
chapter, a general MIMO-OFDM system model was developed, covering not only the case
of spatial multiplexing, but also MIMO BF. The tools to explore the applicability of spa-
tial multiplexing to mm-wave communications were provided by a detailed discussion of the
MIMO channel capacity. This chapter also included a review of two existing BF schemes
that are specifically tailored to OFDM-based MIMO systems, namely subcarrier-wise and
symbol-wise BF. The symbol-wise processing of the latter approach implies that the antenna
weight vectors are kept fixed across all subcarriers and thus allows for the BF operations to
be carried out in the time domain. Consequently, only one DFT per terminal is required by
symbol-wise BF, resulting in an (Mtx +Mrx ) /2-fold saving of DFT processors compared to
the subcarrier-wise approach. These savings in computational complexity come at the cost
of a reduced degree of freedom, which in turn causes a performance degradation relative to
subcarrier-wise BF. However, keeping in mind the strictly limited implementation complexity
of practical 60 GHz transceivers, symbol-wise BF was identified as the more attractive scheme.
Moreover, this chapter has identified the need for a performance benchmark for symbol-wise
BF systems. While the mutual information of any MIMO BF scheme is upper-bounded by
the aforementioned subcarrier-wise BF solution, this bound is generally loose when applied
to symbol-wise BF systems and hence not sufficient.
The focus in Chapter 3 was the modelling of 60 GHz MIMO channels. The chapter
opened with a review of existing models, which has revealed that a generic channel model for
multi-antenna mm-wave communications is not available to date and that extensive channel
100 Chapter 7. Conclusions
sounding followed by detailed stochastic analysis will be necessary to develop such a model.
For the purpose of this thesis, a flexible 3D ray-tracing channel model was adopted that
supports arbitrary antenna array geometries and sizes. A set of SISO channel ensembles ob-
tained via this ray-tracing approach was then used to demonstrate some of the typical channel
characteristics of 60 GHz channels. The presented results confirmed the anticipated ray-like
propagation and unfavourable channel conditions, originating from the severe attenuation of
propagating 60 GHz signals. The strong attenuation in turn gives rise to non-rich multipath,
comparably small RMS delay spreads and very high spatial correlation. Correlation coeffi-
cients well in excess of 0.5 were encountered even at distances as large as 40λc (20 cm). The
high propagation losses call for high antenna gains and highlight the potential of adaptive
multi-antenna solutions for mm-wave communications. Furthermore, results in this chapter
showed that typical CIRs contain only a small number of significant MPCs. These few MPCs
were identified to dictate the channel behaviour, including the spatial correlation.
In Chapter 4, the capacity of typical 60 GHz MIMO channels and the implications for the
applicability of spatial multiplexing were discussed. Although in general, BF is not capacity-
achieving, results in this chapter showed that for typical 60 GHz channels, subcarrier-wise
BF incurs only a small loss in mutual information relative to the channel capacity. This ob-
servation has a two-fold implication for mm-wave communications: first, the near-optimality
of subcarrier-wise BF underlines the potential of joint transmit and receive BF schemes and
second, 60 GHz channels are generally unsuitable for spatial multiplexing. Even when us-
ing antenna arrays with inter-element spacings as large as 40λc (20 cm), the multiplexing
gains were found to be small, a result of the exceptionally high spatial correlation levels. In
the second part of Chapter 4, it was demonstrated that spatial multiplexing may still be
a viable option for mm-wave communications when used in conjunction with polarisation
diversity. In LoS-dominated situations, two eigenmodes of similar strength can be created by
using antennas with two orthogonal polarisations. In the high SNR regime, this polarisation-
diversity-based approach was shown to outperform subcarrier-wise BF. However, as a result
of limited polarisation mixing in 60 GHz channels, the cross-coupling between the two orthog-
onal polarisations is only small, giving rise to lower received power levels when compared to
the BF approach. At lower values of the SNR (over longer link distances), this power penalty
diminishes the multiplexing gain and renders subcarrier-wise BF superior. Subcarrier-wise
BF also becomes superior once the misalignment angle between the antenna arrays exceeds
a certain threshold. Therefore, the polarisation-diversity-based scheme is adequate when
transmission occurs over a short LoS link and when the user is able to roughly align the par-
ticipating devices. Such conditions are met, for example, in a “Kiosk” scenario, involving the
wireless high-speed download of multimedia content. Furthermore, the fact that subcarrier-
wise BF can be extended to arbitrary antenna array sizes renders this approach more scalable
than the polarisation-diversity-based scheme, which is limited to two antenna elements per
terminal.
Chapter 5 was dedicated to symbol-wise BF with the specific goals to derive a tighter
bound on the associated mutual information and to assess the ultimate capabilities of symbol-
wise BF in the context of mm-wave communications. It was shown that the analytical max-
imisation of the mutual information is intractable and that convex optimisation techniques
cannot be applied. Whilst the attempt to maximise SINRpre (a simpler but still non-concave
objective function) did not lead to a closed-form solution either, a numerical solution was
derived via the method of Lagrange multipliers. The corresponding algorithm maxSINRsym
computes the antenna weight vectors by iteratively solving a pair of coupled eigenproblems.
Extensive computer simulations showed that this algorithm, which is guaranteed to con-
verge, generally finds the global maximum or a near-by solution. It was not possible to
derive an equally simple algorithm for the maximisation of the mutual information due to
7.1. Future Directions 101
the much more involved nature of this metric. However, in the special case without co-
channel interference, the conditions for maximum mutual information simplify to a coupled
pair of non-linear eigenproblems, each of which can be solved via the MPM. The resulting
algorithm maxMIsym updates the solutions of the individual eigenproblems alternatingly
(similar to maxSINRsym). Monte-Carlo simulations showed that the convergence behaviour
of the two algorithms maxMIsym and maxSINRsym is similar and furthermore, that the
SINRpre -based solution is typically characterised by a negligible loss relative to the mutual-
information-maximising solution. Due to the considerably lower computational requirements
of maxSINRsym, this algorithm not only enables a more efficient bound computation, but
also represents a viable implementation option for symbol-wise BF in practical mm-wave
transceivers. The complexity savings achieved by symbol-wise BF come at the expense of a
performance loss relative to subcarrier-wise BF. Analysis and simulation results for a stochas-
tic Kronecker channel model showed that this performance penalty becomes smaller when
the channel becomes less frequency-selective or more correlated in space. Simulation results
for typical 60 GHz channels confirmed that symbol-wise BF is extremely well-suited for mm-
wave communications: the relative performance degradation is comparably small on these
highly correlated channels. Furthermore, when the received signal is corrupted by co-channel
interference, maxSINRsym was shown to significantly outperform its interference-unaware
counterpart maxSNRsym and phased-array BF.
Motivated by the fact that the performance penalty of symbol-wise BF can be consid-
erable on general MIMO-OFDM channels, several BF approaches that recover some of this
loss were developed in Chapter 6. The first of these approaches applies existing symbol-
wise BF algorithms to groups of subcarriers. Performance and complexity can be flexibly
traded off within the limits of symbol-wise and subcarrier-wise BF. As only one DFT is re-
quired per group and terminal, subcarrier-group-wise BF can avoid the large computational
overhead that subcarrier-wise BF incurs when large antenna arrays are used. Furthermore,
it was found that subcarrier-group-wise BF lends itself particularly well to OFDMA-based
multi-user systems, which are characterised by an inherent subcarrier grouping. In such
a scenario, the additional computational requirements of the user terminals relative to the
single-antenna case was found to be only minor as most of the processing is carried out
at the access point/base station. Following a different avenue, asymmetric BF approaches
where one terminal performs symbol-wise BF and the second terminal subcarrier-wise BF
were considered in the second part of Chapter 6. Based on a Lagrangian approach for the
maximisation of the mutual information, two novel algorithms were derived that compute
the subcarrier-wise BF vectors analytically and the symbol-wise BF vector numerically (via
the MPM). From a complexity point of view, subcarrier-wise BF should be carried out at the
terminal, where a higher computational load is acceptable (typically at the access point/base
station). However, it was shown by means of computer simulations that the highest mutual
information is achieved when subcarrier-wise BF is employed at the link end subject to lower
spatial correlation.
7.1 Future Directions
As summarised in the previous section, this thesis has introduced important results in the
field of mm-wave communications and specifically, in the area of reduced-complexity MIMO
BF solutions. However, the research presented in this thesis has also opened up numerous
research directions that remain the subject of future work. Some of these topics are outlined
as follows:
• The presented 60 GHz results were based on channel ensembles obtained by means of
102 Chapter 7. Conclusions
ray-tracing. Whilst initial results have indicated the validity of this channel model, the
system performance should be re-evaluated using measured 60 GHz channels, as well
as other channel models once available (e.g. the IEEE 802.11ad channel model that is
currently being developed).
• By quantifying the system performance in terms of the mutual information, it was pos-
sible to keep the results independent of a particular choice of finite modulation alphabet
or error-correcting coding scheme. To explore the effects of practical modulation and
coding schemes, the multi-antenna solutions considered in this thesis could, for example,
be compared in terms of bit or frame error rates.
• Even though the proposed symbol-wise BF algorithms are characterised by compara-

bly low computational requirements, further complexity reductions would be desirable
(particularly, when using large antenna arrays). One possible approach is to compute
the antenna weights using only a few dominant channel taps rather than the entire CIR.
Particularly in channels with sparse multipath, such approximations have the potential
to incur only a small performance penalty.
• This thesis has opened up interesting research avenues in the area of subcarrier-group-
wise BF that are worth being explored more thoroughly, particularly in the context of
OFDMA-based multi-user systems. For example, optimally allocating subcarriers (and
power) remains an open problem that could be tackled based on a maximum mutual
information/sum rate criterion.
• The effect of the antenna arrays needs to be investigated in greater detail, including
large array sizes and 2-dimensional array geometries such as uniform circular arrays or
squared arrays. For example, it should be explored if and how rapidly the proposed
symbol-wise BF algorithms focus in on a strong MPC, (provided that the array size is
sufficiently large to ensure a narrow main lobe). Furthermore, the choice of antennas can
have a significant impact on channel characteristics and system performance. Therefore,
more realistic antennas should be considered, including a comparison with the ideal
half-wavelength dipole antennas that were used in this thesis.
• Due to its simplicity, phased-array BF is attractive for wireless multi-antenna commu-

nications, including mm-wave communications. Application of the results of this thesis
supports the performance assessment of phased-array BF over 60 GHz channels. Specif-
ically, the symbol-wise BF performance bounds that were derived in this thesis provide
a means to assess the relative performance loss of existing phased-array BF solutions.
or LMS. Such a comparison will also reveal how much performance is lost by comput-
ing the transmit and receive antenna weight vectors individually rather than jointly.
Furthermore, considering phased-array BF raises the question whether it is possible to
derive an upper bound on the mutual information for the special case where uniform
weight amplitudes are used and if so, how close this bound is to that for the case of
unrestricted weights. In the context of practical BF implementations, it will also be of
interest to explore the effect of antenna weight/phase quantisation on the performance.
Appendix A
Proofs and Derivations
A.1 Proof of Theorem 2.1
Proof. The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality [68] will be used to prove that
u†n Hn v n v †n H†n un
SINRep,n (un , v n ) = Ps 6 Ps v †n H†n R−1
W n Hn v n .
u†n RW n un
In a first step, SINRep,n can be rewritten as
un Hn v n 2
†
SINRep,n = Ps †
un RW n un
2
† 12 − 12

un RW n RW n Hn v n

= Ps . (A.1)
u†n RW n un
The expression inside the absolute value operator can be regarded as the inner product of
1/2 −1/2
the two vectors y = RW n un and z = RW n Hn v n . The numerator is therefore of the form
† 2
y z and application of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality [68]
† 2 † †
y z 6 y y z z (A.2)
yields the upper bound

u†n RW n un v †n H†n R−1
Wn Hn v n
SINRep,n 6 Ps
u†n RW n un
= Ps v †n H†n R−1
W n Hn v n . (A.3)
Note that the bound is achieved if and only if the two vectors are linearly dependent [68],
−1/2 −1/2
which is the case for un = RW n y ∝ RW n z = R−1 W n Hn v n .
A.2 Kronecker Correlation Matrices
Consider the real-valued transmit and receive correlation matrices R0rx,l and R0tx,l with ex-
ponentially decaying entries [110]
0 |j−i|
Rtx,l i,j = ρtx,l , (A.4)
104 Appendix A. Proofs and Derivations
|j−i|
R0rx,l

i,j
= ρrx,l . (A.5)
According to Eq. (3.25), a corresponding channel realisation can be generated as
01/2 0 T /2
H 00l = σl Rrx,l Gl Rtx,l , (A.6)
where the entries of Gl are i.i.d. CN (0, 1). As highlighted in [60], real-valued correlation ma-
trices give rise to a mean phase variation of 0◦ across the antenna arrays. To achieve non-zero
phase variations corresponding to a particular mean DoA ϕDoA,l , [60] proposes to left multiply
H 00l with a diagonal matrix Φl , whose ith element is given by exp −j2π sin ϕDoA,l drx (i−1) .

Here, this approach is generalised to
H 0l = Φl H 00l Ψ l , (A.7)
where Ψ l is defined analogously to Φl to also take non-zero mean DoDs ϕDoD,l into ac-
count. Applying the vec(·) operation to Eq. (A.7) and using the identity vec(CXD) =
(D T ⊗C) vec(X) [124] yields

01/2 0 T /2
vec H 0l = σl vec Φl Rrx,l Gl Rtx,l Ψ l

01/2
= σl Ψ l Rtx ⊗ Φl R01/2
rx vec(Gl ) . (A.8)
The complex correlation matrix of H 0l can therefore be written as
n † o
Rl = EH 0l vec H 0l vec H 0l

n o
01/2 01/2 0†/2 0†/2
= σl2 Ψ l Rtx,l ⊗ Φl Rrx,l EGl vec(Gl ) vec(Gl )† Rtx,l Ψ †l ⊗ Rrx,l Φ†l

01/2 01/2 0†/2 0†/2
= σl2 Ψ l Rtx,l ⊗ Φl Rrx,l Rtx,l Ψ †l ⊗ Rrx,l Φ†l , (A.9)
where in the last step, it was taken into account that Gl has i.i.d. entries with unit variance.
Furthermore, application of the matrix identity (A⊗B) (C⊗D) = AC⊗BD [68] results in

01/2 0†/2 01/2 0†/2
Rl = σl2 Ψ l Rtx,l Rtx,l Ψ †l ⊗ Φl Rrx,l Rrx,l Φ†l

= σl2 Ψ l R0tx,l Ψ †l ⊗ Φl R0rx,l Φ†l
= σl2 Rtx,l ⊗ Rrx,l . (A.10)
From Eq. (A.10), it can be seen that the resulting Kronecker correlation matrices, which now
incorporate the mean phase variations across the transmit and receive arrays, are given by
Rtx,l = Ψ l R0tx,l Ψ †l , (A.11)

Rrx,l = Φl R0rx,l Φ†l . (A.12)
Their (i, j)th entries are found as
|j−i|
= ρtx,l e−j2π sin(ϕDoD,l )dtx (i−j) ,

Rtx,l i,j
(A.13)
|j−i|
= ρrx,l e−j2π sin(ϕDoA,l )drx (i−j) .

Rrx,l i,j
(A.14)
A.3. Second Condition for Maximum Mutual Information 105
A.3 Second Condition for Maximum Mutual Information
The gradient of the Lagrangian LI as defined in Section 5.2 with respect to u is given by
∇u LI (u, v, µ, ζ, ν) = ∇u I (u, v, µ)
N −1
1 X µn ∇u SINRep,n (u, v)
= . (A.15)
N log 2 1 + µn SINRep,n (u, v)
n=0
Application of the product rule of differentiation to SINRep,n in Eq. (2.46) yields

†
∂ u† Hn vv † H†n u

∇u SINRep,n (u, v) = Ps
∂u u† RW n u
!†
u† Hn vv † H†n ∂u
∂
u ∂ 1
= Ps − u† Hn vv † H†n u
u† RW n u ∂u u† RW n u
∂ †
!†
u† Hn vv † H†n † † † ∂u u RW n u
= Ps − u Hn vv Hn u
u† R W n u (u† RW n u)
2
!†
u† Hn vv † H†n † † † u† RW n
= Ps − u Hn vv Hn u
2
!
Hn vv † H†n u † † † RW n u
= Ps − u Hn vv Hn u . (A.16)
2
Substituting this result into the expression for the gradient yields
† † †
Hn vv Hn u
1
N −1 Hn vv † H†n u − u u †R RW n u
Wn u
X
∇u LI (u, v, µ, ζ, ν) = µn Ps . (A.17)
N log 2
n=0
u† RW n u + µn Ps u† Hn vv † H†n u
Setting the gradient to zero and rearranging terms then results in
N −1
1 X µ̂n Ps Hn v̂v̂ † H†n û
=
N log 2 †
RW n + µ̂n Ps Hn v̂v̂ † H†n û
n=0 û
† † †
Hn v̂v̂ Hn û
1
N
X −1 µ̂n Ps û û†
RW n û
RW n û. (A.18)
N log 2 †
RW n + µ̂n Ps Hn v̂v̂ † H†n û
n=0 û
A.4 Proof of Theorem 5.1
Proof. In order to show that the function
N −1

X 1
I (u, v) = log2 1 + Ps (A.19)
N u† RW n u
n=0
is not jointly concave in u and v, it needs to be proved that its Hessian matrix F (I (u, v)) is
not negative semidefinite as discussed in Section B.3. This can be achieved by showing that
c† F (I) c is not non-positive for arbitrary c.
T
The Hessian with respect to a stacked variable vector x = uT v T was considered in

Section B.2. Let us start with determining F uv , which is the lower left block entry of F xx ,
which itself is the upper left block entry of F .
†
∂ ∂I (u, v)
F uv (I (u, v)) =
∂u ∂v
†
v † H†n uu† Hn ∂v
 ∂
N −1 v
1 ∂ X Ps †
u RW n u
=
 
N log 2 ∂u † H vv † H† u
 
n=0 1+ Ps u u n
†R
n
Wn u
N −1
1 ∂ X Ps H†n uu† Hn v
= (A.20)
† H† u

N log 2 ∂u u† R + P H vv
n=0 W n s n n
Introducing the shorthand notation P n = RW n + Ps Hn vv † H†n and noting that P n is inde-

pendent of u, the previous expression can be written as
N −1
∂ X Ps u† Hn v H†n u

1
F uv (I (u, v)) =
N log 2 ∂u u† P n u
n=0
N −1 ∂ † !
1 X Ps u† Hn v ∂u Hn u ∂ 1
= + Ps u† Hn v H†n u
N log 2 u† P n u ∂u u† P n u
n=0
N −1
!
Ps X † H†n † u† P n
= u Hn v − Hn u
N log 2 u† P n u (u† P n u)
2
n=0
N −1
Ps X u† Hn v
= 2 u† P n u H†n − H†n uu† P n , (A.21)
N log 2 (u† P n u)
n=0
where the product rule of differentiation was used in the second step. With this expression,
the third term of Eq. (B.17) becomes
N −1
(
n o Ps X u† Hn v
2 Re e† F uv d = 2 Re 2
N log 2 †
n=0 (u P n u)
)
h i
× u† P n u e† H†n d − e† H†n uu† P n d . (A.22)
Since d and e are arbitrary complex vectors, the term in the squared brackets is an arbitrary
complex scalar (the two matrices
† between
e† and d may or may not be (semi)definite). As a
result, the expression 2 Re e F uv d can take on negative or positive values. Unless this term
is cancelled out by one of the other terms in Eq. (B.16), the Hessian matrix F can be positive
semidefinite, negative semidefinite, or even indefinite (depending on the particular choice of
the vector c). Cancellation is impossible though. Neither of the remaining terms of Eq. (B.16)
are quadratic in a, i.e. other terms of the form e† Cd, where C is some constant matrix,
cannot occur. Therefore, a closer examination of the remaining two terms in Eq. (B.16) is
not required. This concludes the proof that the function I (u, v) is not jointly concave in u
and v (and neither is I jointly convex in the two variable vectors).
A.5. Non–Concavity of SINRpre 107
A.5 Non–Concavity of SINRpre
Theorem A.1. The function
u† H l vv † H †l u
PL−1
l=0
SINRpre (u, v) = Ps
u† Rw u
is not jointly concave in both variable vectors u and v.
Proof. In order to show that SINRpre is not jointly concave in u and v, it needs to be proved
that its Hessian matrix F (SINRpre (u, v)) is not negative semidefinite as discussed in Sec-
tion B.3. This can be achieved by showing that c† F (SINRpre ) c is not non-positive for arbi-
trary c.
T
The Hessian with respect to a stacked variable vector x = uT v T was considered in

Section B.2. Let us start with determining F uv , which is the lower left block entry of F xx ,
which itself is the upper left block entry of F .
∂ SINRpre (u, v) †

∂
F uv (SINRpre (u, v)) =
∂u ∂v
!†
v † H †l uu† H l ∂v
L−1 ∂
X ∂ v
= Ps
∂u u† Rw u
l=0
L−1 †
X ∂ H l uu† H l v
= Ps (A.23)
∂u u† Rw u
l=0
Applying the product rule of differentiation yields
u† H l v H †l u† H l v H †l u †
L−1 !
X
F uv (SINRpre (u, v)) = Ps − u Rw
u† Rw u (u† Rw u)
2
l=0
L−1
u† H l v
u† Rw u H †l − H †l uu† Rw .
X
= Ps 2 (A.24)
l=0 (u† Rw u)
With this expression, the third term of Eq. (B.17) becomes

( L−1
n o X u† H l v
2 Re e† F uv d = 2 Re Ps 2
†
l=0 (u Rw u)
)
h i
† † † † † †
× u Rw u e H l d − e H l uu Rw d . (A.25)
Since d and e are arbitrary complex vectors, the term in the squared brackets is an arbitrary
complex scalar (the two matrices between e† and d may or may not be (semi)definite). As
a result, the entire expression can take on negative or positive values. Unless this term is
cancelled out by one of the other terms in Eq. (B.16), the Hessian matrix F can be positive
semidefinite, negative semidefinite, or even indefinite (depending on the particular choice of
the vector c). Cancellation is impossible though. Neither of the remaining terms of Eq. (B.16)
are quadratic in a, i.e. other terms of the form e† Cd, where C is some constant matrix,
cannot occur. Therefore, a closer examination of the remaining two terms in Eq. (B.16) is
not required. This concludes the proof that the function SINRpre is not jointly concave in u
and v (and neither is SINRpre jointly convex in the two variable vectors).
A.6 Conditions for Maximum SINRpre
The Lagrangian of (5.20) that describes the associated unconstrained optimisation problem
is given by

LSINRpre (u, v, ζ) = SINRpre (u, v) − ζ v † v − 1 , (A.26)
where ζ is the Lagrangian multiplier associated with the constraint v † v 6 1. Taking the
gradient of the Lagrangian with respect to v yields
∇v v † A(u) v
†

∇v LSINRpre (u, v, ζ) = − ∇ v ζ v v − 1
u† Rw u
A(u)
= † v − ζv. (A.27)
u Rw u
Setting the gradient to zero and multiplying both sides with û† Rw û then results in the first
optimality condition

∇v LSINRpre û, v̂, ζ̂ = 0
A(û)
⇐⇒ v̂ = ζ̂ v̂, (A.28)
û† Rw û
which under the assumption that the receive side vector û is fixed, can be interpreted as an
eigenproblem with eigenvector v̂ and eigenvalue ζ̂. In other words, if a closed-form expression
for û existed, the optimal transmit side vector v̂ would be given by the dominant eigenvector
of matrix A (the denominator of the left-hand side of Eq. (A.28) is only a scaling factor that
does not change the directions of the eigenvectors of A). Therefore, the eigenproblem (A.28)
can equivalently be written as
A(û) v̂ = ζ 0 v̂, (A.29)

ζ 0 = û† Rw û ζ̂. (A.30)
It remains to determine û. Application of the product rule of differentiation yields the
gradient of the Lagrangian with respect to u
−1
∇u LSINRpre (u, v, ζ) = u† Rw u ∇u u† B(v) u
−1
+ u† B(v) u ∇u u† Rw u − ∇u ζ v † v − 1
B(v) u Rw u
= − u† B(v) u 2. (A.31)
u† Rw u †
(u Rw u)
After setting this expression to zero, multiplying it with u† Rw u and rearranging terms, the
second optimality condition reads

∇u LSINRpre û, v̂, ζ̂ = 0
û† B(v̂) û
⇐⇒ B(v̂) û = Rw û. (A.32)
û† Rw û
| {z }
γ
Eq. (A.32) is a generalised eigenproblem with γ and û being the generalised eigenvalue and
eigenvector of the matrix pencil formed by B(v̂) and Rw [78]. As with the first condition
(A.28), this generalised eigenproblem can only be solved if the optimal v̂ is already known.
A.7. Re–expressing SINRpre 109
A.7 Re–expressing SINRpre
Noting that H l = 0 for l > L, the upper summation limit of the matrix A according to
Eq. (5.13) can be extended to N − 1 without changing the value of A, i.e.
L−1 N −1
H †l uu† H l H †l uu† H l .
X X
A(u) = Ps = Ps (A.33)
l=0 l=0
Now substituting for the time domain channels H l by

N −1
1 X n
Hl = Hn ej2πl N , (A.34)
N
n=0
which is the inverse DFT expression to Eq. (2.11), A can be rewritten as

N −1
H †l uu† H l ,
X
A(u) = Ps
l=0
N −1 N −1 N −1
! !
X 1 X † −j2πl n 1 X n0
= Ps Hn e N uu† Hn0 ej2πl N
N N 0
l=0 n=0 n =0
N −1 N −1 N −1
Ps X X † 1 X n−n0
= Hn uu† Hn0 e−j2πl N
N 0
N
n=0 n =0 l=0
| {z }
δn,n0
N −1
Ps X †
= Hn uu† Hn . (A.35)
N
n=0
Similarly, the matrix B according to Eq. (5.14) can be expressed in terms of the frequency
domain channel matrices as
N −1
Ps X
B(v) = Hn vv † H†n . (A.36)
N
n=0
Furthermore, the covariance matrices of the noise and interference vectors in the time
and frequency domain are related according to
N −1
1 X
Rw = RW n . (A.37)
N
n=0
To see this, consider

N −1 N −1
1 X 1 X n o
RW n = E Wn Wn†
N N
n=0 n=0
N −1 N −1 N −1
( )
1 X 1 X n
j2πk N 1 X † 0 −j2πk0 n
= E √ w[k]e √ w [k ]e N
N N N 0
n=0 k=0 k =0
N −1 N −1 −1
o 1 NX
1 X X n 0 n
= E w[k]w† [k 0 ] ej2π(k−k ) N
N N
k=0 k0 =0
| n=0 {z }
δkk0
N −1
1 X n o
= E w[k]w† [k]
N
k=0
N −1
1 X
= Rw
N
k=0
= Rw , (A.38)
where in the first step, vector W n was replaced by its IDFT expression according to Eq. (2.10)
and in the last step, it was taken into account that w is temporally uncorrelated (see Sec-
tion 2.1).
Substituting Eqs. (A.35) and (A.37) into the expression for SINRpre according to Eq. (5.15)
then yields the SINR before OFDM demodulation
PN −1 †
1
u Hn vv † H†n u
SINRpre = PsN n=0P , (A.39)
−1
u† N1 N n=0 R Wn u
expressed in terms of the frequency-domain quantities Hn and RW n . Note that Eq. (A.39) √
and the original expression
PN −1 in Eq. (5.12) are of the same form (with H l replaced by H n / N
and Rw replaced by n=0 RW n /N , and summations over all subcarriers rather than all
channel taps).
Appendix B
Complex Differentiation and
Convexity/Concavity
B.1 Complex Differentiation
The standard complex derivative of a function of complex variables exists if and only if
the function is analytic (or, equivalently, holomorphic). Many engineering problems are,
however, concerned with the optimisation of non-analytic objective functions such as some
scalar real-valued performance measure that is a function of one or more complex variables.
One approach is to optimise such a function with respect to the real and imaginary parts
of the complex variables. In the n-dimensional case, a mapping from Cn to R2n is required
before the derivatives with respect to the real and imaginary parts can be taken. The main
disadvantage of this approach is that the objective function, which might be much more
conveniently represented in terms of the complex variables, first needs to be rewritten in
terms of the real and imaginary parts of the variables.
An alternative approach is to generalise the standard complex derivative such that it can
be directly applied to a non-analytic function in its original representation. An in-depth
discussion of the generalised complex derivative, as well as how it is related to the real
derivative taken with respect to to real and imaginary parts of the variables can be found
in [115]. For convenience, some definitions of [115] that are relevant for this work are repeated
here, together with the number of the page on which they appear in [115].
Conjugate Coordinates Instead of interpreting complex-valued z in terms of its real

and imaginary parts, it can also be represented in the so-called conjugate coordinates. In
conjugate coordinates, the point is represented by z and its complex conjugate z ∗ [115, p.7].
Consequently, a function f of a complex variable z can be viewed as f (z, z ∗ ).
Generalised Complex Derivative Along with the representation in conjugate coordi-

nates, two partial derivatives
∂f (z, z ∗ )

(B.1)
∂z ∗
z =const.
∂f (z, z ∗ )

(B.2)
∂z ∗ z=const.
112 Appendix B. Complex Differentiation and Convexity/Concavity
are defined [115, p.7]. The first one differentiates with respect to z regarding z ∗ as a constant,
whereas the second partial derivative differentiates with respect to z ∗ treating z as a constant.
Note that this is a formal definition since the variables z and z ∗ are not independent. For
ease of notation, the dependency of a function on both z and z ∗ will not be stated explicitly
and we will write f (z) instead of f (z, z ∗ ). Furthermore, when differentiating with respect to
one of the variables the annotation that the respective other variable is to be regarded as a
constant will be omitted from now on.
In order to extend the generalised complex derivative to the n-dimensional case, the pair
of scalar partial derivatives is replaced by a pair of differential row operators [115, p.14]
∂ h i
(·) = ∂z∂ 1 (·) · · · ∂
∂zn (·) (B.3)
∂z
∂ h
∂ ∂
i
∂z ∗
(·) = ∂z ∗ 1 (·) · · · ∂z ∗ n (·) . (B.4)
Example B.1
To illustrate how these operators are applied, consider the simple scalar-valued func-
tion f (z) = z † Cz, where C is a square matrix with the same number of rows as z.
In order to differentiate this function with respect to z, we can write
∂f (z) ∂z † Cz ∂z
= = z†C = z † C,
∂z ∂z ∂z
where z † = (z ∗ )T only depends on z ∗ and is therefore treated as a constant. Similarly,
one can obtain
T
∂f (z) ∂z † Cz ∂ z † Cz ∂z T C T z ∗ T T ∂z
∗
= = = = z C = zTC T,
∂z ∗ ∂z ∗ ∂z ∗ ∂z ∗ ∂z ∗
where the fact that a scalar value equals its transpose was used.
First-Order Condition for Stationary Point The first-order condition for a scalar real-
valued function f of a complex variable vector z to be stationary with respect to the real
and imaginary parts of z is given by [115, p.17]
∂f (z)
= 0. (B.5)
∂z
This first-order condition can equivalently be expressed in terms of the partial derivative with
respect to z ∗ , i.e.
∂f (z)
= 0. (B.6)
∂z ∗
Complex Gradient In analogy to the real gradient, it is possible to define the complex
gradient of a real-valued function of complex variables [115, p.20]. The corresponding complex
gradient operator is defined as
†
∂
∇z (·) = (·) . (B.7)
∂z
Note that like the real gradient, the complex gradient is a column vector.
B.2. Complex Hessian with respect to a Stacked Variable Vector 113
Complex Hessian In the context of conjugate coordinates, the complex Hessian matrix
of a real-valued function f (z) is defined as the block matrix [115, p.37]1

F zz (f (z)) F z∗ z (f (z))
F (f (z)) = , (B.8)
F zz∗ (f (z)) F z∗ z∗ (f (z))
where the individual matrices are given by
∂ ∂f (z) †
†
∂ ∂f (z)
F zz (f (z)) = , F z∗ z (f (z)) = ,
∂z ∂z ∂z ∗ ∂z
∂ ∂f (z) †
†
∂ ∂f (z)
F zz (f (z)) =
∗ , F z∗ z∗ (f (z)) = . (B.9)
∂z ∂z ∗ ∂z ∗ ∂z ∗
Since the Hessian is a Hermitian matrix, it follows that the diagonal block entries F zz and
F z∗ z∗ are also Hermitian matrices and that the off-diagonal block entries are Hermitians of
each other, i.e. F z∗ z = F †zz∗ .
There exists a direct relationship between the complex Hessian with respect to z and
the real Hessian with respect to the real and imaginary parts of z [115, p.35]. Through this
relationship, the properties of the two Hessian matrices are also linked. In particular, the
complex Hessian matrix is positive semidefinite (negative semidefinite) if and only if the real
Hessian is positive semidefinite (negative semidefinite).
B.2 Complex Hessian with respect to a Stacked Variable Vec-

tor
The complex Hessian matrix of a scalar real-valued function of a variable vector z was
introduced in Section B.1. Some of the functions investigated in this work depend on two
separate variable vectors, each of which has its own physical interpretation (see Chapter 5 for
examples). For those functions, taking the partial derivatives with respect to the individual
variable vectors is more convenient than taking the partial derivatives with respect to all
variables at the same time. Due to the same reasons, it will be beneficial to rewrite the
complex Hessian matrix in terms of the partial derivatives with respect to the individual
variable vectors.
Let x denote the variable vectors u and v stacked on top of each other, i.e. x =
T T
u v T . According to Section B.1, the Hessian matrix of a function f (x) is given by

F xx (f (x)) F x∗ x (f (x))
F (f (x)) = . (B.10)
F xx∗ (f (x)) F x∗ x∗ (f (x))
Substituting for x yields the individual block matrices expressed in terms of the partial
derivatives with respect to u and v:
 † † 
† ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂ ∂f (x)  ∂u ∂u ∂v ∂u
F xx (f (x)) = =

† † 
∂x ∂x ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂u ∂v ∂v ∂v

F uu (f (u, v)) F vu (f (u, v))
= (B.11)
F uv (f (u, v)) F vv (f (u, v))
1 C
Be aware that the complex Hessian in conjugate coordinates c is denoted as Hcc in [115]. In order to
avoid confusion with the frequency domain channel matrices Hn (see Eq. (2.11)), F is used in this work to
denote the complex Hessian.
 † † 
† ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂ ∂f (x)  ∂u∗ ∂u ∂v ∗ ∂u
F x∗ x (f (x)) = =

† † 
∂x∗

∂x ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂u∗ ∂v ∂v ∗ ∂v

F u∗ u (f (u, v)) F v∗ u (f (u, v))
= (B.12)
F u∗ v (f (u, v)) F v∗ v (f (u, v))
 † † 
† ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂ ∂f (x)  ∂u ∂u∗ ∂v ∂u∗
F xx∗ (f (x)) = =

∗
† † 
∂x ∂x ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂u ∂v ∗ ∂v ∂v ∗

F uu∗ (f (u, v)) F vu∗ (f (u, v))
= (B.13)
F uv∗ (f (u, v)) F vv∗ (f (u, v))
 † † 
† ∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂ ∂f (x)  ∂u∗ ∂u∗ ∂v ∗ ∂u∗
F x∗ x∗ (f (x)) = =

† † 
∂x∗ ∂x∗

∂ ∂f (u,v) ∂ ∂f (u,v)
∂u∗ ∂v ∗ ∂v ∗ ∂v ∗

F u∗ u∗ (f (u, v)) F v∗ u∗ (f (u, v))
= . (B.14)
F u∗ v∗ (f (u, v)) F v∗ v∗ (f (u, v))
It can be seen that each of the block entries of F itself has block matrix structure. Also, since
F xx is a Hermitian matrix as mentioned in Section B.1, it can be deduced that the diagonal
block entries F uu and F vv are Hermitian matrices, too, and that the lower left block matrix
is the Hermitian of the upper right block matrix, i.e. F vu = F †uv . The same properties can
be established for the block entries of the Hermitian matrix F x∗ x∗ .
B.3 Convexity and Concavity
A scalar real-valued function of several real variables is convex if and only if its domain is
convex and its Hessian matrix is positive semidefinite [73, p.71]. Similarly, negative semidef-
initeness is required for concavity.
As mentioned in Section B.1, the transformation of a scalar real-valued function of several
complex variables to a function of real variables can be achieved by replacing all complex
variables by their respective real and imaginary parts. It was also discussed in Section B.1
that a positive semidefinite or negative semidefinite complex Hessian matrix implies a positive
semidefinite or negative semidefinite real Hessian matrix and vice versa. Therefore, convexity
and concavity of a function can be equivalently established by examining either its real or
the complex Hessian. Here, the complex Hessian will be used.
Consider a scalar real-valued function f of a complex variable vector x. The function
f is convex or concave if its Hessian F according to Eq. (B.8) is positive semidefinite or
negative semidefinite. For F to be positive semidefinite or negative semidefinite, the product
c† F c needs to be non-negative or non-positive for arbitrary non-zero vectors c. Let c be
T
partitioned into c = aT bT with a and b having the same length as x. Then one can

write
c† F c = a† F xx a + a† F x∗ x b + b† F xx∗ a + b† F x∗ x∗ b, (B.15)
i.e. it is possible to examine c† F c in terms of the individual block entries of F . Due to the
property F x∗ x = F †xx∗ (see Section B.1), the previous equation can also be written as
n o
c† F c = a† F xx a + b† F x∗ x∗ b + 2 Re a† F x∗ x b . (B.16)
B.3. Convexity and Concavity 115
Let us now assume that x originates from stacking two variable vectors u and v on top of
each other as described in Section B.2. In this case, all of the matrices F xx , F x∗ x∗ , and F x∗ x
also have an underlying block structure and the three terms of Eq. (B.16) can be expanded
analogously to c† F c. For later use, the expansion of the first term is presented here. By
taking the block structure of F xx according to Eq. (B.11) and the property F vu = F †uv into
account, the term a† F xx a can be rewritten as
n o
a† F xx a = d† F uu d + e† F vv e + 2 Re d† F vu e
n o
= d† F uu d + e† F vv e + 2 Re e† F uv d , (B.17)
where d and e have the same length as u and v, respectively, and partition a into a =
T T
d eT .
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List of Tables viii

List of Publications xviii

2.3.1 Subcarrier–Wise Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3 MIMO Channel Model for 60 GHz Communications 29

6.1.2 Numerical Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

A Proofs and Derivations 103

B Complex Differentiation and Convexity/Concavity 111

2.1 OFDM-based MIMO communications system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.1 Physical and analytical channel model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3.1 Object and material properties of the partitioned office. . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.1 Pseudo-code for maxSINRsym. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Acronym Description Page

Acronym Description Page

Symbol Description Page

Symbol Description Page

Symbol Description Page

Symbol Description Page

Symbol Description Page

Triggered by the release of up to 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum around 60 GHz, millime-

Computer simulations demonstrate the performance degradation of symbol-wise BF rel-

[1] A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and N. Letzepis, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for MIMO-

[2] A. Pollok, N. Letzepis, and W. G. Cowley, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for Co-Channel

[4] N. Letzepis, A. Pollok, and W. G. Cowley, “Mutual information distribution of spa-

[5] A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and I. D. Holland, “Multiple-input multiple-output options

Digitally signed by Andre Pollok

1.1 Millimetre–Wave Communications

Due to a continually growing interest in wireless communication services, frequency spectrum

1.1.1 Propagation Characteristics and Antenna Effect

1.1.2 GLIMMR Project

1.1.3 Standardisation Efforts

Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig)

1.2 Multi–Antenna Techniques

Throughout the history of wireless communications, multiple-antenna techniques have re-

1.2.1 Spatial Multiplexing

quantitative assessment are currently available. Adopting an information theoretic perspec-

1.3 Contribution and Outline of Thesis

To date, a comprehensive study of the ultimate capabilities of different multi-antenna tech-

Chapter 2 — MIMO Communications

Chapter 3 — MIMO Channel Model for 60 GHz Communications

Chapter 4 — Spatial Multiplexing

Chapter 5 — Symbol–Wise Beamforming

Symbol-wise BF has been considered as a low-complexity BF scheme for OFDM-based MIMO

A. Pollok, W. G. Cowley, and N. Letzepis, “Symbol-Wise beamforming for MIMO-OFDM transceivers

Chapter 6 — Beamforming Extensions

2.1 System Model

2.1.1 Frequency–Flat Channel

y[k] = Hs[k] + w[k], (2.1)

2 , which can be interpreted as the average signal-to-noise ratio

2.1.2 Frequency–Selective Channel

The concept of OFDM modulation can be readily extended to frequency-selective MIMO

Figure 2.1: OFDM-based MIMO communications system.

k = −Ncp −Ncp +1 ··· −1 0 1 ··· N −1

where δnn0 denotes the Dirac delta and

2.2 Spatial Multiplexing

Pr(C 6 Cout,q ) = q, (2.13)

2.2.2 Polarisation Diversity

Figure 2.2: Subcarrier-wise BF for OFDM systems.

2.3 MIMO Beamforming

2.3.1 Subcarrier–Wise Beamforming

Assuming a power allocation

the transmit power constraint according to Eq. (2.6) now reads