Hybrid RF-mmWave communications to achieve low latency and high energy efficiency in 5G cellular systems

Abstract

We propose a hybrid architecture to integrate RF (i.e., sub-6 GHz) and millimeter wave (mmWave) interfaces for 5G cellular systems. To alleviate the challenges associated with mmWave communications, our proposed architecture integrates the RF and mmWave interfaces for beamforming and data transfer, and exploits the spatio-temporal correlations between the interfaces. Based on extensive experimentation in indoor and outdoor settings, we demonstrate that an integrated RF/mmWave signaling and channel estimation scheme can remedy the problem of high training overhead associated with mmWave beamforming. In addition, cooperation between two interfaces at the higher layers effectively addresses the high delays caused by highly intermittent connectivity in mmWave channels. Subsequently, we formulate an optimal scheduling problem over the RF and mmWave interfaces where the goal is to maximize the delay-constrained throughput of the mmWave interface. We prove using subadditivity analysis that the optimal scheduling policy is based on a single threshold that can be easily adopted despite high link variations. We design an optimal scheduler that opportunistically schedules the packets over the mmWave interface, while the RF link acts as a fallback mechanism to prevent high delay.