Performance Evaluation of Analog-digital Beamforming for Uplink Multi-User Millimeter Wave Systems

This paper considers hybrid beamforming for millimeter wave system in uplink transmission where multiple users send their data streams simultaneously. Hybrid beamforming has low-cost and low power consumption features compared to conventional digital beamforming schemes. We assume that each user uses one transmit antenna and sends one data stream, while the base station has multiple receive antennas and multiple radio frequency chains. Therefore, hybrid beamforming is performed only at the base station. We also assume that each user does not know instantaneous channel side information (CSI), while the base station is able to estimate the CSI from all users accurately. Under this channel assumption, the outage probability is not zero. We evaluate the outage probability of the considered hybrid beamforming as a performance metric through computer simulations. We show that the outage probability of hybrid beamforming approaches that of digital beamforming in some cases.