Key technologies for beamforming in millimeter wave communication system

Abstract

Millimeter wave (mmWave) is one of the key technologies of 5G. It can solve the problem of insufficient spectrum resources. However, mmWave links are easily affected by the environment, such as the user equipment (UE) mobility, link blocking, etc. Moreover, the path loss and atmospheric absorption will also cause a great loss to the channel quality. Dealing with these challenges, beamforming is an effective solution. This paper tracks the progress of beamforming in mmWave communication system, including hybrid beamforming structure, mmWave channel state information (CSI) acquisition, and beam management methods during UE movement. We explore the applicability of different beamforming technologies, and discuss the future challenges in this domain.