Spatial Modulation Schemes and Modem Architectures For Millimeter Wave Radio Systems

The rapid growth of wireless industry opens the door to several use cases such as internet of things and device to device communications which require boosting the reliability and the spectral efficiency (SE) of the wireless access network, while reducing the energy consumption at the terminals. The vast spectrum available in millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band is one of the most promising candidates to achieve high speed communications. However, the propagation of the radio signals at high carrier frequencies suffers from severe path-loss which reduces the coverage area. Fortunately, the small wavelengths of the mmWave signals allow packing a large number of antennas not only at the base station (BS) but also at the user terminal (UT). These massive antenna arrays can be exploited to attain high beamforming and combining gains and overcome the path-loss associated with the mmWave propagation. Conventional (fully digital) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transceivers, each antenna is connected to a specific radio-frequency (RF) chain and high resolution analog-to-digital-converter (ADC). Unfortunately, these devices are expensive and power hungry especially at mmWave frequency band and when operating in large bandwidths. Having this in mind, several novel modulation schemes and massive MIMO transceiver designs for mmWave systems are proposed in the PhD thesis with the purpose of reducing the hardware cost and the energy consumption with the challenge of maintaining a high SE.