Flexible Beamforming in 5G Wireless for Internet of Things

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe next generation mobile networks would transform not only the way people communicate, but also how they access physical entities. The convergence of things into human-centric wireless communication would unleash opportunities for a better quality of life, while offering new business avenues. Conventional solutions cannot fully realize dense, diverse and heterogeneous dimensions expected in unified connectivity of “things” over the “Internet” (IoT). At the same time, emerging 5G wireless networks promise improvement in spectrum availability, ubiquitous connectivity, overall throughput and energy efficiency. However, to encompass the dynamics of human-centric and machine-centric communication, it is important to explore 5G wireless technologies for flexibility and scalability. To this regard, we propose flexible beamforming (FBF) antenna architecture that allows flexibility in terms of data rates, coverage and scalability in an energy-efficient manner. We capture initial lessons from investigations on mmWaves, beamforming, downtilt and small cell deployment strategies. Our simulation experiments, using real 5G testbed parameters, validate performance benefits of the proposed FBF antenna architecture. With around 4 Gbps throughput capacity, FBF promises higher scalability. Moreover, FBF achieves 53% higher energy efficiency than maximum power beams.