Millimeter wave wireless transmissions at E-band channels with uniform linear antenna arrays: Beyond the Rayleigh distance

Abstract

In this paper, we study the point-to-point E-band millimeter wave wireless channel with uniform linear antenna arrays (ULAs) deployed at both link ends and present an analytical approach to characterize the channel behavior. We first derive explicit expressions for some channel eigenvalues at certain discrete system settings. The asymptotic behavior and the effective multiplexing distance (EMD) of the E-band channel are then investigated, where the latter is defined as the end-to-end distance at which the channel can support a certain number of spatially independent streams at finite signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). We analytically show that the EMD for a given number of parallel signal transmissions is mainly determined by the product of the aperture sizes of the transmit and receive ULAs. This finding provides useful insights into the design of practical multi-gigabits wireless communication systems over E-band.