TY - JOUR
T1 - Over-the-air Radiated Testing of Millimeter-Wave Beam-steerable Devices in a Cost-Effective Measurement Setup
AU - Fan, Wei
AU - Kyösti, Pekka
AU - Rumney, Moray
AU - Chen, Xiaoming
AU - Pedersen, Gert F.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - With the severe spectrum congestion of sub-6GHz cellular systems, large-scale antenna systems in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands can potentially meet the high data rate envisioned for fifth generation (5G) communications. Performance evaluation of antenna systems is an essential step in the product design and development stage. However, conventional cable conducted test methods are not applicable for mmWave devices. There is a strong need for over-the-air (OTA) radiated methods, where mmWave device performance can be evaluated in a reliable, repeatable, and feasible way in laboratory conditions. In this article, radiated testing methods are reviewed, with a focus on their principle and applicability for beam steerable mmWave devices. To explore the spatial sparsity of mmWave channel profiles, a cost-effective simplified 3D sectored multi-probe anechoic chamber (MPAC) system with an OTA antenna selection scheme is proposed. This setup is suitable for evaluation of beam-steerable devices, including both base station (BS) and user equipment (UE) devices. The requirements for the test system design are analyzed, including the measurement range, number of OTA antennas, number of active OTA antennas and amount of channel emulator resource. Finally, several metrics to validate system performance are described for evaluation of mmWave devices.
AB - With the severe spectrum congestion of sub-6GHz cellular systems, large-scale antenna systems in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands can potentially meet the high data rate envisioned for fifth generation (5G) communications. Performance evaluation of antenna systems is an essential step in the product design and development stage. However, conventional cable conducted test methods are not applicable for mmWave devices. There is a strong need for over-the-air (OTA) radiated methods, where mmWave device performance can be evaluated in a reliable, repeatable, and feasible way in laboratory conditions. In this article, radiated testing methods are reviewed, with a focus on their principle and applicability for beam steerable mmWave devices. To explore the spatial sparsity of mmWave channel profiles, a cost-effective simplified 3D sectored multi-probe anechoic chamber (MPAC) system with an OTA antenna selection scheme is proposed. This setup is suitable for evaluation of beam-steerable devices, including both base station (BS) and user equipment (UE) devices. The requirements for the test system design are analyzed, including the measurement range, number of OTA antennas, number of active OTA antennas and amount of channel emulator resource. Finally, several metrics to validate system performance are described for evaluation of mmWave devices.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85051078691&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/MCOM.2018.1701006
DO - 10.1109/MCOM.2018.1701006
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0163-6804
VL - 56
SP - 64
EP - 71
JO - I E E E Communications Magazine
JF - I E E E Communications Magazine
IS - 7
M1 - 8419180
ER -