Potentials of low-complexity Rake receivers for 60 GHz UWB wireless communication systems

Beside the existence of well established standards targeting the 60 GHz mmWaves band and the availability of the very first commercial products on the wireless market, there are still open research challenges at different levels of system design. Considered as the future core short-range wireless technology, 60 GHz networks are expected to revolutionize the next-generation WPAN and WLAN experience by providing reliable and energy efficient multigigabit links at lower system design complexity. In this paper, based on our empirical measurements in different measurement scenarios, carefully created to closely correspond to real usage models, we show that low-complexity UWB Rakes have the potential to be considered as serious competitor to OFDM and SC-FDE for the future 60 GHz transceiver technology. Performance evaluation is realized by semi-analytical bit error rate analyses of different Rake architectures considering high data rate modulations. We show that low-complexity Rake receiver schemes are capable to provide sufficient performance using both standard-defined 64-QAM and ultra-wideband impulse radio signaling with 64-PPM and 64-PAM. The study is realized through the spectrum from 54 to 66 GHz and the effect of the carrier frequency on the performance is also discussed.