- NI mmWave Platforms: Sarah Yost and Ian Wong
NI will be demoing an over the air, real-time mmWave communications system. With 2 GHz of bandwidth and FPGA co-processors, this system is used to create a full link in real-time. This system runs a physical layer that is being proposed for Phase 2 New Radio. The combination of SDR hardware and flexible, open software allow researchers accurately prototype 5G mmWave systems in everyday scenarios, from the lab to outdoors.
Local equipment needs: 2 mice, 2 monitors (with VGA cables), 2 keyboards. ideally 2 tables, or one 6ft table.
- Qualcomm mmWave prototype demo (video): Ashwin Sampath
Local equipment needs: laptop, mouse, display and a table
- NYU mmWave Channel Emulator: Aditya Dhananjay and Marco Mezzavilla
Channel emulation is a basic tool for the design and evaluation of wireless systems. In channel emulation, the TX and RX devices under test (DUTs) are physically connected to a channel emulator which is a box that simulates a configurable wireless channel between the two devices. The wireless channel is generally described via multipath fading profile which can be configured to reproduce measured traces or standard profiles such as in the 3GPP models. In contrast to over-the-air (OTA) testing, channel emulation enables reproducible and highly configurable test cases that can be performed at much lower costs. The challenge with traditional emulation for mmWave scenarios is the need to support high-dimensional phased arrays. The traditional emulation paradigm, when applied to DUTs having a large number of antenna elements, breaks down due to the following reasons: a) prohibitive computational complexity; b) expensive hardware requirements; and c) cumbersome interfaces between the DUTs and the emulator.
We demonstrate a prototype mmWave channel emulation where the DUTs interface with the emulator entirely in baseband. The emulator not only emulates the wireless channel, but also the multi-antenna RF front-ends on the DUTs themselves. In other words, the emulator emulates the effective baseband SISO channel between the TX and RX DUTs. The advantages of this approach are: a) it de-couples the design of the baseband algorithms from the design of the RF front-end, leading to faster iterations of system design and testing; b) significantly lower computational complexity of O(1), irrespective of the number of antennas in the emulated front-ends; c) lower hardware costs; d) suitable for implementation over generic SDR components (such as FPGAs). We demonstrate an emulator built on top of National Instruments SDR platform with 3 GHz of instantaneous bandwidth simulating a 5G New Radio-type connection.
Local equipment needs: monitor, mouse, keyboard and a table
- MIMObit: A Cross Layer Design Tool for 5G and …much more: Nick Buris
Multi Element Antenna (MEA) systems for Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) capable products are employed in WiFi to increase robustness and throughput and are key to the deployment of Cognitive Radio, 4G and 5G wireless systems. But, unlike past practices, MIMO antenna systems cannot be adequately described with traditional attributes of gain and radiation efficiency alone. Additionally, for very wideband antenna systems and for the envisioned high frequencies of 5G, high fidelity antenna description and coupling is expected to play a significant role. Furthermore, the same techniques that optimize MIMO systems have the greatest potential in optimizing Spectrum Utilization and Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) approaches. Thus, integrated approaches, where antenna design decisions are made at the Capacity/Throughput level, while DSA decisions are made at the Spectrum Utilization Efficiency (SUE) level are required for optimal cost-performance product and network solutions.
MIMObit provides just that! For the antenna designer, MIMObit provides performance evaluation of MEA systems in terms of Throughput and Capacity (Open Loop, Beamforming, Waterfilling). Based on an EM exact formulation, MIMObit treats antenna systems very accurately, including antenna terminations, element coupling, matching circuits, full active E-field gains and various RF propagation models (these models include the latest 3GPP New Radio models valid in the 0.5 to 100 GHz range, the IEEE as well as models based on Ray Tracing of actual propagation environments). For the DSA designer and spectrum manager, MIMObit provides Signal and Interference Tx radio user-defined power masks and temporal behaviors which allow the evaluation of RF Radio Maps, Harmful Interference, Spectrograms and Spectrum Utilization.
MIMObit 2.0 will be demonstrated on a number of problems to showcase some of the aforementioned concepts and the ability to handle them in a consistent and quantitatively robust way.
Local equipment needs: table.
- WiMi 60 GHz platform at UW-Madison: Chuhan Gao, UW-Madison.
A demonstration of the 60 GHz WiMi platform.
- 28 GHz CAP-MIMO Testbed at UW-Madison: Kevin Zhu and Chris Hall, UW-Madison.
A demonstration of the CAP-MIMO testbed for single user and multiuser communication in both LoS and NLoS conditions.