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PIMRC 2018 Workshop W7: Millimetre Wave Communications

Date: Sunday, September 9 Time: 9.00 – 17.30
Workshop Organiser(s): Lead Chairs Dr. Haris Pervaiz, 5GIC, University of Surrey, UK Prof. Reiner S. Thomä, TU Ilmenau, Germany
Co-Chairs Dr. Shahid Mumtaz, Instituto de Telecomunicações Aveiro, Portugal Prof. Mohsen Guizani, University of Idaho, USA Dr. Bruno Clerckx, Imperial College London, UK Prof. Vittorio Degli Esposti, Università di Bologna Prof. Muhammad Ali Imran, University of Glasgow, UK Moray Rumney, Keysight Technologies Ltd.
TPC Co-Chairs: Dr. Leila Musavian, University of Essex, UK
Publicity Chair: Dr. Oluwakayode Onireti, University of Glasgow, UK Dr. Nikolas Thomos, University of Essex, UK

Motivation and Background
Cellular communication systems have historically undergone a revolution about once a decade, driven by a combination of technological advances that demand a paradigm shift (e.g., an entirely new standard) to realize, and market demands that render the existing standards unsustainable. This trend implies (consistent with industry consensus) that “5G” will begin to be standardized in a few years’ time, commercialized around 2020, with widespread adoption by 2025. Now is the time for serious research on the future of 5G. However, there is a fundamental challenge that needs to be addressed: 5G must support much (100-1000x) higher data rates, while current systems are already very close to the point-to-point Shannon limit. We believe that there are dominantly three methods to get several orders of magnitude throughput gain: (i) extreme densification of networks, (ii) large quantities of bandwidth, and (iii) many more antennas in the spatial domain.

In a rare twist of luck, these three methods are complementary in many respects. Large bandwidth requires going to higher frequencies, especially to the promising millimeter wavelength spectrum (“mmWave”, which is for carrier frequencies between 30-300 GHz). These high frequencies require many antennas to compensate for the severe path losses of mmWave frequencies. Furthermore, higher frequencies need smaller cells to overcome blocking and pathloss, while the same channel characteristics (path loss and blocking) make the interference due to cell densification decay quickly. Thus, mmWave communication can naturally combine plausible ways mentioned above for 5G, which makes it a promising candidate to achieve orders of magnitude throughput gain.

Part I: PHY and MAC Layer Challenges and Innovations Although the potential of mmWave communication is exciting, the challenges facing a dense urban/rural mmWave based cellular network are barely understood. Hence, to make mmWave communication reality for dense urban environment, there are many questions and challenges that must be addressed. An inherent property of mmWave is that it is more likely to work under light-of-sight (LOS) dominant environment due to its severe path loss, however, in actual wireless communication cellular networks, strong blockages usually exist. Such environment makes the mmWave systems unstable since they will be exhibiting a high probability of outage. The multiplexing gains demonstrated by large antennas at cellular spectrum are harder to obtain at mmWave, since there are fewer users per cell. In addition, with hundreds of antennas deployed by the base station, the hardware complexity and energy consumption become a challenging problem. For example, one antenna needs one dedicated radio frequency (RF) chain in existing wireless systems. If we directly extend such architecture to mmWave communication, the hardware complexity and energy consumption will be prohibitively high. As a result, new system design tailored to mmWave communication is of utmost importance. These issues span the breadth of communication theory and engineering, from modulation, equalization, interference management and testbed implementation to antenna design and RF/analog/ baseband processing. The main goal of this workshop is to explore the new ideas of mmWave communication and capture its current advancement.

Part II: Millimetre Wave Propagation Measurement and Channel Modelling The work in 3GPP to define channel models for the development of the 5G New radio (NR) air interface is ongoing. 3GPP published the Study on channel models for frequencies from 0.5 to 100 GHz in March 2017 providing a framework for system level and link level channel models. However, besides of the 10 times higher frequencies compared to conventional radio, we may have about 100 times more bandwidth and 100 times more antennas per array. Moreover, as 3GPP is focusing on static geometry requirements, these models will fail to validate link and system performance in sparse and dynamic mmWave channels. There are also not enough representative measurements of directional wideband channels in dynamic environments available. The aim of this workshop is to discuss new mmWave modelling insights and paradigms, which have to be considered beyond the current status at 3GPP. The workshop is convened by the European COST CA15104 framework “Inclusive Radio Communication Networks for 5G and beyond (IRACON)” which hosts a discussion platform on channel modelling since many years.

Selected Papers accepted for the workshop will be considered for publication on a forthcoming IEEE Access Special Section on mmWave and Terahertz Propagation Measurements, Modeling and Applications.

Tentative Keynote Speakers:
• Channel Modelling and Spatial Performance Requirements for 3GPP mmWave New Radio, Moray Rumney, Keysight Technologies Ltd [40 min] moray_rumney@keysight.com

• Mohammad Shikh-Bahaei, Kings College London, UK [25 min] m.sbahaei@kcl.ac.uk

• 5G-MiEdge, Valerio Frascolla, Intel Mobile Communications, Neubiberg, Germany [40 min] valerio.frascolla@intel.com

• Self-organising the ultra-dense cellular networks working on mmWave technologies, Muhammad Imran, University of Glasgow, UK [25 min] Muhammad.Imran@glasgow.ac.uk

Therefore, the main goal of this workshop is to explore the new ideas of mmWave communication and capture its current advancement. This workshop will bring together academic and industrial researchers to identify and discuss technical challenges and recent results related to mmWave communications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Information theoretic issues of mmWave Communication • Novel waveform for mmWave Communication • 3D beamforming for mmWave Communication • Channel estimation techniques for mmWave Communication • Modulation and energy efficiency for mmWave Communication • MAC layer design for mmWave Communication • Interference management for mmWave Communication • Mobility management in mmWave Communication • Random matrix theory and mmWave analysis of wireless communication systems • Backhaul transmissions for mmWave Massive MIMO • System-level modelling in mmWave Communication • Antenna and RF transceiver for mmWave Systems • Architecture experimental demonstrations, tests and performance characterization of mmWave systems • Standardization and business models for mmWave Communication • Channel modelling paradigms for millimetre wave communications • Deterministic and stochastic principles for millimetre wave cannel modelling • Does PHY design influence channel modelling paradigms? • Identify relevant millimetre wave propagation scenarios for eV2X • Results and challenges in millimetre wave channel sounding • Measurement based estimation of link- and system-level performance figures

Submission Guidelines
Prospective authors are invited to submit technical papers of their previously unpublished work. Accepted workshop papers will be part of the Conference Proceedings and will be uploaded to IEEE Xplore. Papers should be submitted via EDAS; the links are available at http://pimrc2018.ieee-pimrc.org under “Authors”. Papers should follow the same Author guidelines of the general symposium, which are available at http://pimrc2018.ieee-pimrc.org/authors/submission-guidelines/.

Key Dates

Paper submission: May 18, 2018

Acceptance notification: June 15, 2018

Final paper due: June 29, 2018

The same may apply also to other PIMRC-workshops:

http://pimrc2018.ieee-pimrc.org/program/workshops/