RoF Active MIMO Antenna for Broadband Communications

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Future broadband wireless communications networks must be more ubiquitous and agile to support extreme mobile broadband service, capacity, and connectivity with an ultra-reliability. Future wireless technology using the New Radio (NR) waveform on millimeter-wave carrier's frequencies along with active massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (mMIMO) antennas equipped with beamforming (BF) capabilities, is leading to a paradigm shift in the network from static cell-based network to dynamic-beam based one. This significant technological shift calls to extend the use of optical communications from the backhaul segment of the network to its fronthaul for ultra-broadband capacity and ultra-high data speed requirements between base stations and the network data's centers as stipulated by the enhanced Common Public Radio Interface eCPRI. This trend will further surge for the next generation (6G) of wireless communications. This research proposal aims at inventing and proposing new innovative solutions and radio architectures for the mentioned challenges. The next evolutionary step for these systems is the broadening of communications signals by increasing the carrier's frequencies to higher millimeter waves (mm-waves) and by adopting frequency reuse across different radio access terminals equipped with active multi-antenna transmitters with beamforming capabilities. These active antennas are critical to overcoming the signal propagation issues due to high path loss at mm-wave frequencies. They also provide the ability to generate multi-beams that can be steered towards multi-users. Such active multi-antennas transceivers will allow the frequency spectrum to be shared dynamically and efficiently, yielding more capacity when it is needed and where it is required, along with better sensitivity, inherent built-in interference mitigation, and adaptation to varying channel and traffic conditions, as well as dynamic cognitive network topology configuration. Power efficiency, ultra-broadband multi-antenna transmitters and the scalability of such transmitters to mMIMO architectures will be the focus of this grant proposal since they are among the major challenges to overcome to ensure seamless deployment and sustainability of next-generation of wireless and satellite communication systems. This research program has the potential of generating valuable knowledge and training of HQP in the areas of future broadband wireless and satellite communications; critical to the Canadian ICT industry. The present grant application has four main objectives related to transceiver's design of future radio systems: (i) wide-band and concurrent multi-band signal-processing capabilities for active BF-MIMO Transmitters; ii) scalable broadband transceiver's design using Radio over Fiber (RoF) technologies; iii) design of active mm-wave Front-end Modules (FEM) using GaN technology; and iv) mitigation of nonlinear distortion and hardware impairments in mMIMO array antenna.