Benefit of Millimeter-wave Development Systems

The next generation of mobile wireless technologies (5G), RF imaging, and even radar will be leveraging upper microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies for high data rate communications and sensing applications. The U.S. FCC and ITR have already investigated several upper microwave and millimeter-wave bands for use for these applications, and intense international investment has been gaining momentum over the past few years. 2020 is the year slated for the first rounds of 5G deployment. It is likely that these early 5G systems will use sub-6 GHz frequencies, as the necessary development and technologies are yet to be in place for large scale production of higher frequency communication and sensing systems.

Much of the delay in these advancements is due to the limited availability of affordable millimeter-wave test and development systems that are accessible to the RF community. This is especially hindering, as the RF propagation, antenna physics, and supporting electronics/circuitry differs significantly compared to sub-6 GHz commercial systems. Fortunately, the state of affairs with millimeter-wave development systems has begun to change with recent offerings that are at price points even accessible to university labs and small start-ups.

Some of the challenges of designing millimeter-wave systems is familiarizing oneself and overcoming the obstacles of atmospheric attenuation, which millimeter-waves are much more susceptible to than sub-6 GHz communication frequencies. Determining the necessary power levels, antenna design, link budgets, and communication/radar waveforms that offer the necessary throughput or resolution/accuracy for millimeter-wave systems is much less documented and straightforward than at lower frequencies. Directionality of millimeter-wave antennas are also much greater than with microwave antennas, which often requires precision placement and orientation of intercommunicating antennas.

Caption: Atmospheric attenuation is a function of temperature, pressure, humidity, weather, and frequency.

Hence, the adoption of phased antenna array technology for beam steerable millimeter-wave antennas is being pursued. Phased array antennas have only recently been explored for commercial and scientific applications, where they were previously restricted to military and space applications. In many cases, prior to accessible millimeter-wave development kits, researchers would have to design a complete communications or sensing platform from scratch in order to develop and test a millimeter-wave phased array antenna. Basically, this would involve developing a millimeter-wave signal source, transmitter, receiver, interconnect, communications modulation or sensing system, and the antenna system. With a millimeter-wave development kit, researchers only need to focus on the development of the phased array antenna, and even have a standard to work with when comparing multiple systems and how various systems may interwork. This is also true for research groups who are focused on developing waveforms, as with a millimeter-wave development kit they can invest their efforts in the waveform development and testing and not system design.

One of the greatest benefits of a readily available and affordable millimeter-wave development systems is the amount of time such a system saves a research group. As these system come complete with documentation, APIs, and sometimes even GUI that enable out-of-the-box operation, prototyping can begin with minimal setup. Even with high-end test and measurement equipment, much setup is often required, and the cost of all of the necessary accessories often requires a trained application engineers assistance.

In the years to come millimeter-wave technologies will move from the research labs to universities and field trials, and finally to commercial availability. Several research groups have already leveraged such kits for advancing phased array antenna technology, 5G waveforms, and even millimeter-wave radar systems. Paving the way for these technologies will be affordable millimeter-wave development kits that help enable and democratize millimeter-wave communication and sensing research and development.

International Unlicensed Spectrum Allocation for the 60 GHz Band

Caption: The 60 GHz ISM band is a swath of globally available millimeter-wave spectrum that offers gigahertz of bandwidth, kilometers of line-of-sight range, very narrow beamwidths, and small form factor antennas.