A 2.4 Gb/s millimeter-wave link using adaptive spatial multiplexing

A scalable system architecture is proposed and demonstrated for spatial multiplexing over millimeter-wave line-of-sight communication links. The architecture decouples spatial channel separation from demodulation, allowing the system bandwidth and data rates to scale up, while performing spatial processing on a time scale matched to the slow time variations of the spatiotemporal channel. The spatially multiplexed channels are separated at the receiver using broadband adaptive analog I/Q vector signal processing. A control loop continuously tunes the channel separation electronics to correct for changes with time in either the propagation environment or the system components. Design and characterization of a four-channel 60 GHz hardware prototype operating at 2.4 Gb/s is presented. This result is the highest data rate line-of-sight wireless link employing adaptive spatial multiplexing reported to date.