WCMW 2015 - Workshop on Wireless Communications in Millimeter Wave Bands

While the challenges addressed by earlier wireless standards (e.g., 4G) were supporting an increasing
number of users, the current challenge for 5G standardization comes from ever growing data traffic. This
has aroused considerable interest in the millimeter wave wireless techniques. Higher bandwidth
communication in millimeter wave spectrum is offering new opportunities for future wireless systems.
There is a growing interest, from both academia and industry, in using millimeter wave bands for point-topoint,
point-to-multi-points, and multi-tiered small cellular networks. Future communications systems such
as the next generation wireless local area networks and 5G cellular systems are exploring the unlicensed
(e.g., 60GHz) and/or licensed bands in the millimeter wave spectrum. The potential for millimeter wave
systems is now well understood and has initiated many research activities.
Signal processing and network design are critical to enable high throughput millimeter wave
communications. Because of the wide bandwidth and higher carrier frequencies, overall mixed signal
processing complexity and power consumption are significant concerns. This motivates developing
techniques that co-design analog and digital components to lower the complexity and power consumption.
Multiple antenna techniques customized to the analog and digital co-design in the millimeter wave domain
are crucial for enabling multi-gigabit-per-second data rates. The millimeter wave systems must support
mobility in higher carrier frequencies, which requires development of time-varying channel adaptive (or
tracking) signal processing techniques and algorithms. Because of the reduced transistor gains, millimeter
wave systems come with the significantly limited power amplifier (PA) efficiency. This low PA efficiency
combined with the need to support high order modulation (for single carrier) and OFDM make PAPR
consideration critical. Sparse millimeter wave channel measurements and modeling are essentially
important to design channel adaptive signaling techniques. Network throughput analysis and simulations
in multi cellular environments are very complicated due to the directional beam propagation, large
dimensional arrays, high pathloss, and sensitivity to blockages. Ray tracing may play an important role in
analyzing and emulating cellular networks in the millimeter wave spectrum. Coverage enhancement in the
presence of blockage is important and maybe resolved by forming reflected beams or by using relays.
Providing cost-efficient millimeter wave backhaul solution is of considerable interest.