Space and frequency multiplexing for MM-wave multi-gigabit point-to-point transmission links

During last 10 years, the use of frequencies at E-band from 71 GHz to 76 GHz, from 81 GHz to 86 GHz and from 92 GHz to 95 GHz to licensed users has been regulated in US, Europe, Australia and Japan. Due to the large amount of available bandwidth and reasonable atmospheric attenuation, these frequency bands are suitable for very high data rate radio communication for medium to long range wireless links. However, in order to convert the bandwidth availability into real capacity, suitable transmission techniques should be designed. In the present paper, we propose a space-frequency multiplexing technique using FDM, coded modulation and 4×4 MIMO spatial multiplexing for point-to-point multi-gigabit connection in the 81-86 GHz bandwidth. We tested the proposed system, considering different link distances, different values of pathloss and atmospheric and rain attenuations. Simulation results evidenced the possibility of achieving a 48 Gb/s net capacity over 5GHz bandwidth (spectral efficiency 9.6 b/s/Hz) with 99.98% availability at link distances up to 1 Km.