This paper evaluates a variety of key 5G technologies such as base station (BS) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, beamforming and tracking, intra-baseband unit (BBU) hand over (HO), and coverage. This is done in different interesting 5G areas with a variety of radio conditions such as an indoor office building lobby, an outdoor parking area, and a realistic urban deployment of a 5G radio access system with BSs installed in buildings to deploy a 5G trial area in the Tokyo Odaiba waterfront area. Experimental results show that throughput exceeding 10Gbps is achieved in a 730MHz bandwidth using 8 component carriers, and distributed MIMO throughput gain is achieved in various transmission point deployments in the indoor office building lobby and outdoor parking area using two radio units (RUs). In particular, in the outdoor parking area, a distinct advantage from distributed MIMO is expected and the distributed MIMO gain in throughput of 60% is achieved. The experimental results also clarify the downlink performance in an urban deployment. The experimental results show that throughput exceeding 1.5Gbps is achieved in the area and approximately 200 Mbps is achieved at 500m away from the BS. We also confirm that the beam tracking and intra-BBU HO work well compensating for high path loss at 28-GHz, and achieve coverage 500m from the BS. On the other hand, line of sight (LoS) and non-line-of sight (N-LoS) conditions are critical to 5G performance in the 28-GHz band, and we observe that 5G connections are sometimes dropped behind trees, buildings, and under footbridges.

This paper evaluates through laboratory and field experiments the combined effect of the coherent adaptive antenna array diversity (CAAAD) receiver and signal-to-interference plus background noise ratio (SINR)-based fast transmit power control (TPC) in order to improve performance beyond that of space diversity (SD) with maximal ratio combining (MRC) in all low-to-high signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR) channels in the W-CDMA reverse link. Although the previously proposed CAAAD receiver comprising an adaptive antenna array based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion and a coherent Rake combiner was very effective in suppressing interference in low SIR (interference is severe) channels, SD employing MRC in noise limited channels (high SIR) outperformed the CAAAD because of its uncorrelated reception of fading variation due to its large antenna separation. The laboratory experimental results showed that the required average transmit signal energy per bit-to-background noise spectrum density (Eb/N0) with the CAAAD receiver using fast TPC is lower than that with an SD receiver over a wide range of maximum Doppler frequency values from fD = 5 Hz to 500 Hz in a low-to-high SIR channel. The results of the field experiments also showed that combining CAAAD and fast TPC is a powerful means to reduce severe multiple access interference (MAI) from high rate users in a low-to-high SIR environment and is more effective than using the SD receiver with the same number of antennas, i.e., the measured BER was improved by approximately one order of magnitude, when the relative transmit power of the desired user was 8 dB with two antennas at the average received SIR at the antenna input of -12 dB.

Multiple access (MA) technology is of most importance for beyond long term evolution (LTE) system. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) utilizing power domain and advanced receiver has been considered as a candidate MA technology recently. In this paper, power assignment method, which plays a key role in performance of NOMA, is investigated. The power assignment on the basis of maximizing geometric mean user throughput requires exhaustive search and thus has an unacceptable computational complexity for practical systems. To solve this problem, a novel power assignment method is proposed by exploiting tree search and characteristic of serial interference cancellation (SIC) receiver. The proposed method achieves the same performance as the exhaustive search while greatly reduces the computational complexity. On the basis of the proposed power assignment method, the performance of NOMA is investigated by link-level and system-level simulations in order to provide insight into suitability of using NOMA for future MA. Simulation results verify effectiveness of the proposed power assignment method and show NOMA is a very promising MA technology for beyond LTE system.

This paper presents indoor and outdoor experiments that confirm 4-Gbps throughput based on 400-MHz bandwidth transmission when applying carrier aggregation (CA) with 4 component carriers (CCs) and 4-by-4 single-user multiple-in multiple-out multiplexing (MIMO) in the 15-GHz frequency band in the downlink of 5G cellular radio access. A new radio interface with time division duplexing (TDD) and radio access based on orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) is implemented in a 5G testbed to confirm ultra-high speed transmission with low latency. The indoor experiment in an entrance hall shows that the peak throughput is 4.3Gbps in front of the base station (BS) antenna where the reference signal received power (RSRP) is -40dBm although the channel correlation at user equipment (UE) antenna is 0.8. The outdoor experiment in an open-space parking area shows that the peak throughput is 2.8Gbps in front of a BS antenna with a high RSRP although rank 2 is selected due to the high channel correlation. The results also show that the average throughput of 2Gbps is achieved 120m from the BS antenna. In a courtyard enclosed by building walls, 3.6Gbps is achieved in an outdoor-to-outdoor environment with a high RSRP and in an outdoor-to-indoor environment where the RSRP is lower due to the penetration loss of glass windows, but the multipath rich environment contributes to realizing the low channel correlation.

This paper proposes adaptive antenna array transmit diversity (AAA-TD) in the W-CDMA forward link with frequency division duplexing (FDD), based on adaptively-generated receiver antenna weights in the reverse link, which only track the changes in the average signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR) and direction of arrival (DOA) but with the calibration of the phase/amplitude variations of the parallel RF receiver/transmitter circuits corresponding to the number of array antennas. The laboratory and field experimental results exploiting AAA-TD are presented to show the strong multipath interference (MPI) suppression effect especially from high-rate users with large transmission power. Laboratory experiments elucidate that by using AAA-TD with four antennas, the required transmitted SIR before multiplying the transmitter antenna weights at the average BER of 10-3 is decreased by approximately 13 dB compared to that with one omni-directional antenna transmitter. Field experiments also show that although an error floor above 10-2 is observed with one omni-directional antenna transmitter when the transmitted SIR is -12 dB due to severe MPI, no error floor is observed when employing 4-antenna AAA-TD and the loss of the required received signal power at the average BER of 10-3 from the single-user case is suppressed to below approximately 5 dB. Therefore, we show that AAA-TD is very effective in suppressing severe MPI especially from high rate users with large transmission power due to its adaptive main lobe and null steering.

This paper describes the results of outdoor mobility measurements and high-speed vehicle tests that clarify the 4-by-8 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) throughput performance when applying distributed MIMO with narrow antenna-beam tracking in a 28-GHz frequency band in the downlink of a 5G cellular radio access system. To clarify suitable transmission point (TP) deployment for mobile stations (MS) moving at high speed, we examine two arrangements for 3TPs. The first sets all TPs in a line along the same side of the path traversed by the MS, and the other sets one TP on the other side of the path. The experiments in which the MS is installed on a moving wagon reveal that the latter deployment case enables a high peak data rate and high average throughput performance exhibiting the peak throughput of 15Gbps at the vehicle speed of 3km/h. Setting the MS in a vehicle travelling at 30km/h yielded the peak throughput of 13Gbps. The peak throughput of 11Gbps is achieved at the vehicle speed of 100km/h, and beam tracking and intra-baseband unit hand over operation are successfully demonstrated even at this high vehicle speed.

This paper presents outdoor field experimental results to clarify the 4-by-4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) throughput performance when applying joint transmission (JT) and distributed MIMO to the 15-GHz frequency band in the downlink of a 5G cellular radio access system. Experimental results for JT in a 100m × 70m large-cell scenario show that throughput improvement of up to 10% is achieved in most of the area and the peak data rate is improved from 2.8Gbps to 3.7Gbps. Based on analysis of the reference signal received power (RSRP) and channel correlation, we find that the RSRP is improved in lower RSRP areas, and that the channel correlation is improved in higher RSRP areas. These improvements contribute to higher throughput performance. The advantage of distributed MIMO and JT are compared in a 20m × 20m small-cell scenario. The throughput improvement of 70% and throughput exceeding 5 Gbps were achieved when applying distributed MIMO due to the improvement in the channel correlation. When applying JT, the RSRP is improved; however the channel correlation is not. As a result, there is no improvement in the throughput performance in the area. Finally, the relationship between the transmission point (TP) allocation and the direction of user equipment (UE) antenna arrangement is investigated. Two TP positions at 90 and 180deg. from each other are shown to be advantageous in terms of the throughput performance with different direction of UE antenna arrangement. Thus, we conclude that JT and distributed MIMO are promising technologies for the 5G radio access system that can compensate for the propagation loss and channel correlation in high frequency bands.

This paper proposes an adaptive radio parameter control scheme that utilizes an optimum radio parameter set comprising the maximum number of retransmissions in hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) in addition to the data modulation and channel coding scheme (MCS) according to the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements (i.e., the required packet error rate and delay) and propagation conditions such as the delay spread in the forward link of Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) broadband wireless access. We elucidate by simulation evaluation that most of the optimum MCSs are common regardless of the delay requirement of traffic data, i.e., common between non-real time (NRT) and real-time (RT) class data. Concretely, the three MCSs of QPSK with the coding rate of R=1/2, 16QAM with R=1/2 and 3/4 are optimum ones, although the additional MCS of QPSK with R=1/3 is effective only for the RT class data in the lower received average received signal energy per symbol-to-background noise power density ratio (Es/N0) region. Furthermore, application of a much higher MCS set, 16QAM with R=5/6 and 64QAM with R=3/4, in addition to the three common MCSs improves the throughput under much higher Es/N0 conditions in a small delay spread environment. The simulation results show that the delay requirement, i.e., the maximum number of retransmissions, in HARQ does not affect the key radio parameter such as MCS, because of informative results such as a smaller number of retransmissions associated with a less-efficient MCS achieves a higher throughput than does using a more highly-efficient MCS allowing a larger number of retransmissions. Consequently, it is concluded that the proposed adaptive radio parameter control according to the QoS requirements substantially results in the selection of the optimum MCS irrespective of the delay requirement except for the extreme case where no retransmissions are allowed and for special propagation channel conditions.

This paper investigates the influence of the number of antennas, the angle difference between the direction of arrival (DOA) of the desired signal and those of interfering signals, and the antenna arrangement on the BER performance of the coherent adaptive antenna array diversity (CAAAD) receiver in the wideband DS-CDMA (W-CDMA) reverse link. Experiments assuming high-rate interfering users were conducted in a radio anechoic room using a three-sectored antenna with a 120-degree beam (maximum number of antennas was six). The experimental results showed that the degree to which the interference was suppressed from high-rate users of the CAAAD receiver was significantly increased by increasing the number of antennas, especially when the number of interfering users was larger than degree of freedom of the CAAAD. It was also verified that although the BER performance of the CAAAD receiver significantly improved compared to a single sectored antenna, the improvement remarkably decreased when the DOA difference between the desired signal and interfering signals was within approximately 10-15 degrees irrespective of the number of antennas. Finally, we show that the BER performance difference between the linear and conformal arrangements was small when using the three-sectored antenna.