A distributed multi-RF chain hybrid mmWave scheme for small-cell systems

This paper proposes a distributed hybrid millimeter wave (mmWave) scheme to exploit the structure of a Densely Deployed Distributed (DDD) small-cell-base-stations (SBSs) system for serving multiple users in a geographic area. Both the SBSs and the users are equipped with full access hybrid architectures with multi-antenna arrays and multiple radio frequency chains. Unlike the conventional cellular networks where users receive data streams from their nearest BSs, the users in our proposed scheme simultaneously receive data streams from different SBSs. With appropriate design of analog beamformers, co-channel multi-data-stream interference can be mitigated and the extra spatial degrees of freedom induced by the geographic distributed SBSs are exploited for data multiplexing. Analytical and simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the system sum-rate considerably, especially when the number of scattering components in millimeter wave channels is limited.