MILLIMETER WAVE COMMUNICATIONS
Hybrid and Full-Digital Beamforming in mmWave
Massive MIMO Systems: A Comparison Considering
Low-Resolution ADCs
Wence Zhang1,2, Xiaoxuan Xia1, Yinkai Fu1, Xu Bao1,*
1
School of Computer Science and Communications Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
2
National Mobile Communications Research Lab., Southeast University, Nanjing 210089, China
* The corresponding author, email: xbao@ujs.edu.cn
Abstract: In a millimeter-wave (mmWave)
Massive multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) systems, full-digital beamforming
(i.e., connecting each antenna with a specific
radio-frequency (RF) chain) becomes ineffi-
cient due to the hardware cost and power con-
sumption. Therefore, hybrid analog and digital
transceiver where the number of RF chains
are much smaller than that of the antennas has
drawn great research interest. In this work,
we investigate the use of low-resolution ana-
log-to-digital converters (ADCs) in the uplink
of multi-user hybrid and full-digital mmWave
Massive MIMO systems. To be specific, we
compare the performance of full-digital min-
imum mean square error (MMSE) and hybrid
MMSE beamforming in both sum rates and
energy efficiency. Accurate approximations
of sum rates and energy efficiency are pro-
vided for both schemes, which captures the
dominant factors. The analytical results show
that full-digital beamforming outperforms
hybrid beamforming in terms of sum rates and
requires only a small portion (γ) of antennas
used by hybrid beamforming to achieve the
same sum rates. We given sufficient condition
for full-digital beamforming to outperform
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hybrid beamforming in terms of energy effi-
ciency. Moreover, an algorithm is proposed
to search for the optimal ADC resolution bits.
Numerical results demonstrate the correctness
of the analysis.
Keywords: hybrid; massive MIMO; mmWave;
MMSE; low-resolution ADCs
I. INTRODUCTION
The millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency
band (typically 30-300 GHz) has recent-
ly attracted much attention due to the fact
that current cellular spectrum below 3 GHz
is under severe shortage and the under-uti-
lized mmWave band can provide much more
spectrum resource to meet the extensive
needs in the coming 5G era [1]. Due to the
shorter wavelength, the antenna arrays at the
mmWave frequencies occupy much smaller
physical dimension (as compared to the anten-
na arrays at current 3G or LTE frequencies)
[2]. This enables the use of massive MIMO
systems[3]–[7], for beamforming to combat
the higher path-loss and absorption at higher
Received: Sep. 5, 2018
frequencies. However, the use of traditional
Revised: Jan. 4, 2019
full-digital beamforming for massive MIMO Editor: Yongming Huang
91

In this work, we have
compared full-digital
and hybrid beamform-
ing with low-resolu-
tion ADCs in mmWave
Massive MIMO sys-
tems.
92
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communications is not practical. This is be-
cause traditional beamforming is performed
at baseband, which requires not only phase
and amplitude signal control, but also the use
of a dedicated radio frequency (RF) chain for
each antenna element. Due to the high cost
and power consumption of the RF chains [2],
such full-digital beamforming solution is not
viable for implementation for massive MIMO
systems at mmWave frequencies.
Due to the above reasons, hybrid ana-
log and digital beamforming schemes for
mmWave massive MIMO systems was first
proposed in [8]. The hybrid architecture uses a
few RF chains, the number of which is much
smaller than that of the antennas. A phase
shifter network is used to connect the antennas
and the RF chains and enables analog beam-
forming. In [8], it concludes that hybrid beam-
forming can approach the performance of
full-digital beamforming provided that at least
two RF chains per antenna. In [9], the phase of
the conjugate transpose of the downlink chan-
nel is used for analog beamforming to achieve
large array gain. Then, zero-forcing (ZF)
digital detection is performed on the effective
channel obtained by multiplying the analog
beamformer and the actual channel matrix.
In [10], the authors propose an HBF scheme,
which achieves near-to-all-digital beamform-
ing performance by switching the phase shift-
ers on and off. In [11], the authors consider
the downlink communication in the multi-user
mmWave massive MIMO system and propose
an energy-efficient weighted minimum mean
square error based hybrid beamforming algo-
rithm to maximize the achievable sum rate.
In [12], a low-complexity hybrid beamform-
ing and combining design for the multi-user
mmWave massive MIMO downlink is pro-
posed, which applies to both fully-connected
structures and sub-connected structures.
Besides hybrid structure, reducing the res-
olution of the ADC is also an effective way
to reduce system power consumption and im-
prove energy efficiency. There are many works
on Massive MIMO systems with low-resolu-
tion ADCs (see [13] and references therein.)
Different models exist for studying the effect
of low-resolution ADCs. The authors of [14]
proposed pseudo quantization noise (PQN)
model which assumes the quantization error
is uniformly distributed and uncorrelated with
the input signal. Another model is additive
quantization noise model (AQNM)[15]–[18],
in which the output of the ADCs is a scaled
version of the input signal plus an uncorrelat-
ed Gaussian noise. Although AQNM is an
approximation, it is convenient for analysis
and provides insights to the effect of low-reso-
lution ADCs. Moreover, comparison between
AQNM and PQN indicates there is no differ-
ence in the fundamental conclusions[14].
Low-resolution ADCs can also be com-
bined with hybrid beamforming. In [19], the
authors propose a generalized hybrid architec-
ture with low-resolution ADCs, the achievable
rate of which is comparable to that obtained
by full-resolution ADC receivers at low and
medium signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). There are
many low-resolution ADCs studies that con-
sider only one-bit quantization [20], [21], but
for a hybrid architecture with one-bit quanti-
zation, its performance is not superior to an
full-digital architecture [22].
In this paper we compare the hybrid and
full-digital beamforming schemes considering
low-resolution ADCs with multiple quantized
bits. Minimum mean square error (MMSE)
design criterion is considered because it gen-
erally outperforms maximum ratio combining
(MRC) and zero-forcing (ZF) schemes. Re-
garding the ADC quantization model, AQNM
is adopted since it facilities the performance
analysis and provides insights. This work
differs form existing work, such as [16]–[18],
[22]–[24]. The work in [17] and [16] inves-
tigate performance of different beamforming
schemes with low-resolution ADCs, while no
closed-form expression for data rates are giv-
en. In [23], a performance analysis of mixed-
ADC massive MIMO systems is provided.
However, the results are valid for MRC detec-
tion, not for MMSE that we considered here.
In [24], the authors carried out performance
analysis for massive MIMO with low-reso-
China Communications • June 2019
lution ADCs using a channel model different performance of hybrid and full-digital beam-
from our work. Moreover, [24] does not con- forming is provided in terms of sum rate and
sider hybrid beamforming. The most related energy efficiency. The numerical results are
work is [22], where the achievable rates and presented in Section IV, and conclusions are
energy efficiency for hybrid beamforming drawn in Section V.
with low-resolution ADCs is analyzed, while Notation: Boldface lower and upper case
the results therein are only for channel inver- symbols represent vectors and matrices, re-
sion and singular value decomposition (SVD) spectively. (⋅)*, (⋅)T, (⋅) H denote the conjugate,
based schemes and no results are provided for the transpose and Hermitian transpose of a
MMSE. vector or a matrix, respectively. {} ⋅ denotes
The main contribution of this work are the expectation operator. I M and I K is the
summarized as follows:
size-M and size-K identity matrix. Tr(⋅) denote
• In order to compare hybrid and full-digital
the trace of a matrix. diag[ X] denote the diag-
beamforming, we derive the MMSE hybrid
onal matrix with the same diagonal elements
beamforming scheme with low resolution
as matrix X. var(⋅) denote the variance of a
ADCs and carry out performance analysis.
random variable. R ss  {ss H } denotes the co-
The approximate SINR of both beamform-
ing methods are provided with simple and variance of random vector s.
elegant expression by taking advantage of
law of large numbers and focusing on the II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
dominant effective factors.
• Regarding the sum rates, we prove that In this section, we will describe the problem
full-digital beamforming is superior to of interest.
hybrid beamforming. To achieve the same
2.1 Signal model considering low-
sum rates as hybrid beamforming, full-digi-
resolution ADCs
tal scheme only requires a proportion (γ) of
π Consider the uplink of a multi-user mmWave
antennas, where γ ≈ for ADCs with high
4 massive MIMO system consisting of a BS
K which has an array of N antennas and serving
resolutions ADCs and γ ≈ for low reso-
N K (K < N) single-antenna user terminals in the
lution ADCs with N, K being the number of same time-frequency resource. We consider
antennas and the number of users, respec- the hybrid beamforming design for a system
tively. as shown in figure 1, where the K RF chains
• The energy efficiency analysis of hybrid use low-resolution ADCs. The received N di-
and full-digital beamforming is given and mensional vector y at the BS can be expressed
the sufficient condition when full-digital as
beamforming outperforms hybrid beam-
forming is provided. We also proposed an
algorithm to search for the optimal quanti-
zation bits that maximizes the energy effi-
hƐĞƌϭ ϭ ϭ
ciency for both schemes. ϭ ϭ >E 

• Simulations are carried out and the analysis , WŚĂƐĞ ĂƐĞďĂŶĚ

^ŚŝĨƚĞƌ WƌŽĐĞƐƐŝŶŐ
are verified by numerical results EĞƚǁŽƌŬ
The rest of the paper is organized as < <
hƐĞƌ< E < >E 
follows. Section II introduces the system
model and the design of hybrid/full-digital
beamforming with low-resolution ADCs for
comparison. In Section III the analysis on the Fig. 1. A diagram of hybrid architecture in mmWave massive MIMO systems.

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 =y pu Hx + n,(1) The quantized output is modeled as [26]
where H represents the N × K channel matrix s= q α s + n q ,(4)
between BS and users, x denotes the K ×1 in which, α = 1 − ρ where ρ is the inverse of
vector of symbols transmitted by all users and the signal-to-quantization-noise ratio, and n q
{xx H } = I K × K, pu is the average transmitted is the additive Gaussian quantization noise
power of each user, and n ~  (0, I ) is the with zero mean and covariance given by
additive white Gaussian noise vector. R nq=
nq α (1 − α )diag{R ss }.
In order to model the mmWave propagation Note that the quantization noise is uncorrelat-
environment, we consider that each propaga- ed with s.
tion path between the BS and user is related Let b be the number of quantization bits
to a scatterer. Assuming the scatterers seen by and assume that the input to the quantizer is
different users are independent, this model is Gaussian. For the non-uniform scalar mini-
referred to as independent multipath channel mum mean-square-error quantizer of a Gauss-
model in [25]. ian random variable, the values of ρ are listed
The channel vector of the k-th user is ex- in Table I for b ≤ 5 and can be approximated
pressed as [25] π 3 −2b
N Lk by
= ρ ⋅ 2 for b > 5 [26].
2
hk = ∑ g kl a N (θ kl ),(2)
L l =1 In this work, we will focus on comparison
where Lk is the number of propagation paths, between hybrid and full-digital beamforming
g kl ~  (0,1) is the complex gain of the l-th for mmWave Massive MIMO systems. For the
path, and θ kl ∈[0, 2π ] denotes the AoA of the purpose of fair comparison, we will introduce
the MMSE-based full-digital beamforming
l-th path. Assume that a uniform linear array
with low-resolution ADCs and then derive its
(ULA) is equipped at the BS, then the steering
hybrid counterpart.
vector a N (θ ) can be modeled as
1 2.2 Full-digital beamforming
=a N (θ ) [1,e-j2π∆ cos θ ,…,e-j2π (N-1) ∆ cos θ ]T ,(3)
N
For full-digital beamforming, the phase shifter
with ∆ the antenna spacing normalized by car-
network in figure 1 is removed and each an-
rier wavelength λ.
tenna is connected to a separate RF chain with
Denote
a low-resolution ADC. The quantized signal
=ck N / L [ g k1 ,…, g kL ]T , y q is obtained from (4) and described as
=A k [a N (θ k1 ),…, a N (θ kL )],
y=
q,FD α pu Hx + α n + n q,FD .(5)
we have
where the covariance of quantization noise
c1 
  n q,FD is

H = [ A1  A K Ac ]    AC.
 cK  α (1 − α )diag  pu HH H + I  .
R nq ,FD nq ,FD =
 
0 0 0  The corresponding full-digital beamform-
where A c is chosen to be orthogonal to A k ing matrix is VFD = R xy q,FD R y−1q,FD y q,FD, where
(k = 1,…, K). R xy q,FD = α pu H H ,
In this paper, we also consider the use of
R y q,FD
= α 2 pu HH H + α 2I + R nq ,FD nq ,FD .
low-resolution ADCs to reduce the cost and y q,FD

power consumption. Let s be the input signal. Therefore, we have the signal after detec-
tion given by
Table I. The value of ρ for different ADC quantization bits b.
rFD = VFD y q,FD
(6)
b 1 2 3 4 5 = α pu VFD Hx + α VFDn + VFDn q,FD .
ρ 0.3634 0.1175 0.03454 0.009497 0.002499

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 2.3 Hybrid beamforming
As illustrated in figure 1, hybrid beamforming
involves two steps: analog beamforming and
baseband beamforming. The overall beam-
forming matrix is denoted as VH = VBVP ,
where VP ∈  K × M and VB ∈  K × K represent
the analog and baseband beamforming matrix,
respectively.
1) Analog Beamforming: The signal after
the phase shifters is given by
y ps V=
= Py pu VP Hx + VPn,
where VP is designed by extracting the phases
1 jφij
of H H [11], i.e., VP(i , j ) = e , where φij is
N ADCs is well-approximated by
the phase of the (i, j ) th element of H H.
2) Baseband Beamforming: The output of
the low-resolution ADCs is
y q,H = α y ps + n q,H = α pu VP Hx + α VPn + n q,H ,
where the covariance of quantization noise
n q,H is derived as
α (1 − α )diag[ pu VP HH H VPH + VP VPH ].
R nq,H nq,H =
(7)
Here, VB is designed based on the MMSE
criterion, i.e., VB = R xy q,H R −1
y q,H y q,H, where
R xy q,H = α pu H H
VPH .
R=
y q,H y q,H α 2 pu VP HH H VPH + α 2 VP VPH + R nq ,H nq ,H .
Therefore, the received signal for hybrid
beamforming is given by
rH = VBy q,H
(8)
= α pu VBVP Hx + α VBVPn + VBn q,H .
Here, we derive the Hybrid MMSE beam-
forming scheme for fair comparison between
full-digital and hybrid receiver structure with
low-resolution ADCs. This work is different
from [22], where channel inversion and singu-
lar-value-decomposition (SVD) based beam-
forming are considered, while we considered
MMSE based methods here. Therefore, the
analysis are completely different.
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
In this section, we will derive the sum rates
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and energy efficiency of hybrid and full-digital
beamforming and carry out comparison be-
tween them. In order to make the results sim-
ple and elegant, we will capture the dominant
factors by approximations.
3.1 Sum rates
As can be seen from (6) and (8), the exact
analysis on the sum rates is very complicated.
Therefore, we will try to focus on the domi-
nant factors that affect the sum rates. The main
results are summarized in Theorem 1.
Theorem 1: The uplink sum rate RFD of
full-digital beamforming with low-resolution
RFD ≈ K log 2 (1 + SINR FD ),
where
N α pu
SINR FD ≈ ,(9)
1 + (1 − α ) pu K
and that of hybrid beamforming is well-ap-
proximated by
RH ≈ K log 2 (1 + SINR H ),
where
N 2π 2
SINR H ≈ d H−1 ,
16( N π / 4 + K − 1)
with
d H = {1 + (1 − α )[ pu ( N π / 4 + K − 1) + 1]}(α pu ) −1.
(10)
Proof: See Appendix A.
It can be seen from Theorem 1 that, both
the SINR of full-digital and hybrid beam-
forming are are related to N, K, α and pu. In
general, the sum rates grows with N due to
increased diversity gain, while decreases with
K because of increased inter-user interference.
Note that, the above results can also be applied
to cases with full-resolution ADCs by setting
α = 1.
Proposition 1: The sum rates of full-digital
beamforming is always higher than hybrid
beamforming.
Proof: The sum rates of both beamforming
schemes are determined by the SINR of each.
Therefore, we only need to prove that SINR FD
is greater than SINR H, which is not straight-
forward. The following proof would be a little
95
 tricky by construction a special function.  K 
 N , full-digital beamforming could save a
From (9) and (10), it can be seen that  H
both SINR FD and SINR H have a form of lot of implementation cost.
f (a, b=
, c, pu ) cpu / (b + apu ) , w h e r e f o r 3.2 Energy efficiency
SINR FD we have
The energy efficiency of the receiver η EE is
(1 − α ) K , bFD =
aFD = Nα ,
1, cFD =
defined as
and for SINR H we have B⋅R
aH =(1 − α )( N π / 4 + K − 1), bH =2 − α , η EE = ,
PTOT
N π 2 ⋅ Nα π N where B is the bandwidth and PTOT denotes the
=cH = Nα .
16( N π / 4 + K − 1) 4 N + 4( K − 1) / π total power consumption, which are given for
Note that when a, b, c, pu are non-negative, full-digital and hybrid beamforming, respec-
f (a, b, c, pu ) decreases with a and b, while in- tively, by
creases with c. It is not difficult to find out that = N ( PRF + 2CW 2b ),
PTOT,FD
(12)
aFD < aH, bFD < bH and cFD > cH. Therefore, we PTOT,H = NKPPS + KPRF + 2 KCW 2b ,
have f (aFD , bFD , cFD ) > f (aH , bH , cH ) and thus where PRF and PPS are the power consumption
SINR FD > SINR H . of the RF link and phase shifters, respective-
Proposition 1 shows that full-digital beam- ly; CW 2b denotes the power consumption of
forming outperforms hybrid beamforming ADCs, where C is the power cost per con-
in terms of sum rates. This is obvious since version and W is the sampling rate. For the
full-digital structure has more degree of free- RF links, it consists of mixer, low path filter,
doms. The following proposition shows fewer and base-band amplifier and etc. The typical
antennas are needed for full-digital structure in values for PRF, PPS and C are chosen to be 39
order to achieve the same sum rates as hybrid
mW, 2 mW and 495 × 10−15 J/Step according to
beamforming.
[27]–[29].
Proposition 2: Assuming N H and N FD an-
The energy efficiency for the hybrid and
tennas are used by hybrid beamforming and
full-digital beamforming are given, respective-
full-digital beamforming, respectively. In
ly, by
order to achieve the same sum rates, N FD is
BRH
approximately given by N FD ≈ N Hγ, where η EE,H = ,(13)
NKPPS + KPLNA + 2 KCW 2b
π BRFD
= γ , if α → 1, η EE,FD = ,(14)
4 NPLNA + 2 NCW 2b
(11)
K
= γ , if α → 0. where RFD and RH are given by Theorem 1.
NH
Although the comparison between hybrid
Proof: When α → 1, we have SINR FD ≈ N FD pu
and full-digital beamforming in terms of energy
and SINR H ≈ N H2 π 2 pu / (4 Nπ + 4 K − 4). Since efficiency can be obtained from (13) and (14), it
K  N in massive MIMO systems, it gives is still not easy to get more insights. Therefore,
SINR H ≈ N H puπ / 4. Setting SINR FD = SINR H we will focus on some typical scenarios.
π Proposition 3: The energy efficiency of
yields N FD ≈ N H . Similarly for α → 0, we
4 full-digital beamforming is larger than hybrid
K beamforming provided that
can obtain N FD ≈ NH .
NH NPRF + 2 NCW 2b
K> .(15)
Proposition 2 shows that when α → 0, i.e., NPPS + PRF + 2CW 2b
the number of ADC resolution bits is rather Proof: Denote PGap as total power consump-
low, hybrid structure is not very efficient.
tion difference between the full-digital archi-
Since by use only a small portion of antennas

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tecture and the hybrid architecture, and we Table II. Algorithm to Find the optimal ADC Quantization Bits b*.
have
Input: bL ← bmin, bR ← bmax;
PGAP
1 While bL < bR −1;
= NPRF + 2 NCW 2b − NKPPS − KPRF − 2 KCW 2b 2 2.1 b1 ← round [(bL + bR ) / 2];
=NPRF + 2 NCW 2b − K ( PRF + 2CW 2b + NPPS ) b2 ← round [(b1 + bR ) / 2];
(16) 2.2 Compute η EE (b1 ) and η EE (b2 ) according to (13) or (14);
Setting PGAP < 0 yields (15), which indi- 2.3 If η EE (b1 ) > η EE (b2 )
cates full-digital beamforming consumes less If b2 = bR, then bR ← bR −1;
power than hybrid beamforming. else bR ← b2;
According to (13), (14) and Proposition 1, End of if;
we have η EE,FD > η EE,H. 2.4 else
Figure 2 shows the condition when If b1 = bL , then bL ← bL + 1;
η EE,FD > η EE,H according to (15). In general, else bL ← b1;
End of if;
hybrid beamforming works well with small
2.5 End of if;
number of K, while full-digital beamforming
End of while.
outperforms its counterpart when K is large,
3 If η EE (bL ) > η EE (bR ), then b* ← bL;
e.g. K > 20 for b < 8. Note that the condition
4 else b* ← bR;
in Proposition 3 is sufficient but not neces-
5 End of if;
sary. It can be seen from Figure 2 that with
Output: b*;
increased value of N, W and b, this condition

becomes stricter, which implies the advantage
of full-digital beamforming over hybrid beam-
Table III. Optimal b* for different scenarios with N = 100.
forming becomes weak.
(K, pu) Full-Digital Hybrid
As can be seen from (14) and (13), ηEE,H and
(10, 10 dB) 5 7
ηEE,FD are functions of b. The optimal choice
(10, -10 dB) 4 6
of b is of great interest for practice. However,
(40, 10 dB) 6 8
this is too complicated to handle in analytical
(40, -10 dB) 5 6
way. Therefore, in this subsection we propose
an algorithm to compute the optimal ADC
resolution bits for hybrid and full-digital
beamforming in order to maximize the energy 150
efficiency. N=100, W=30.72MHz
In practice, ηEE,H and ηEE,FD first increase N=200, W=30.72MHz
120
N=100, W=61.44MHz
with b and then decrease. This motivates to
N=200,W=61.44MHz
use methods based on bisection search. The
algorithm is summarized in Table II. The opti- 90

mal b* for different scenarios are given in Ta-

K

ble III. In general, the optimal resolution bits 60

of hybrid beamforming is a little higher than
that of full-digital beamforming.
30

IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS

0
2 4 6 8 10 12 14
In this section, we present numerical results
b
to show the performance of the hybrid and the
full-digital beamforming in terms of sum data
Fig. 2. The sufficient condition for η EE,FD > η EE,H.

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 rates, and energy efficiency. In all the simula-
tions, the number of user K = 10, the number
of antennas M = 100, the number of multi-path
is L = 5 and the carrier frequency is f = 28
GHz. In the plots, the number of quantization
bits are set to be 14 for full-resolution ADCs.
The simulation results for uplink sum rate
of both architectures with different resolution
ADCs are given in figure 3. It can be seen that
100
Full-Digital-Simulation
90
Full-Digital-Analysis
80 Hybrid-Simulation
Hybrid-Analysis
Sum Rates (bit/s/channel use)
the sum rates of all the schemes improve with
respect to pu and b. As concluded in Proposi-
tion 1, the sum rates of full-digital beamform-
ing is higher than that of hybrid beamforming,
especially when the number of ADC resolution
bits are low. When b becomes large, the gap
between full-digital and hybrid beamfomring
in terms of sum rates becomes negligible. The
numerical results demonstrate the correctness
of the analytical results given in Theorem 1,
with an approximation error within 8%. As
can been in the plots, the analysis are actually
upper bounds of the sum rates. This is due
to that the inter-user interference is omitted
during the derivation. It is worth to point out

70 b=14

60
that the sum rate saturates with low-resolution
ADCs in the high SNR region as a result of
50
b=2 the existing quantization error.
40
Figure 4 illustrates the simulation results for
30 sum rates of full-digital and hybrid beamform-
20 b=1 ing with respect to N. As can be seen in the
10
figure, the sum rates of both schemes increase
with N. As described in Proposition 2, however,
0
-10 -5 0 5 10 full-digital beamforming requires less number
p u [dB] of antennas to achieve the same sum rates as
hybrid beamforming. When b = 2, i.e., α is
close to 0, full-digital beamforming requires
Fig. 3. Uplink sum rate versus different pu, where N = 100, K = 10.
only 10 antennas to reach the performance of
hybrid beamforming with N = 100. The ratio
K
is around γ ≈ = 0.1. When b = 14, i.e., α is
100 N
Full-Digital π
90
Hybrid close to 1, this ratio becomes around .
4
80
Figure 5 shows the relationship between
Sum Rates (bit/s/channel use)

70 b=14 energy efficiency and the number of quantiza-

60 tion bits. The energy efficiency of the hybrid
50 b=1 and full-digital beamforming first increase
and then decline with respect to the number
40
of quantization bits. The reason is that as b
30
increases, the achievable rates first grow and
20 then saturate, while the power consumption
10 keeps growing. When the sufficient condi-
0
tion proposed in Proposition 3 is satisfied,
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 i.e., K = 20 for b < 8, the energy efficiency of
N
full-digital beamforming outperforms that of
hybrid beamforming. However, when K = 10,
Fig. 4. Sum rates versus the number of quantization antennas, where K = 10, with optimal b * obtained using the proposed
pu = 10 dB. algorithm in Table II, hybrid beamforming

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performs significantly better than full-digital
beamforming. × 10 8
10

V. CONCLUSIONS
8 K=20
In this work, we have compared full-digital
and hybrid beamforming with low-resolution
6
ADCs in mmWave Massive MIMO systems. K=10

ηEE (bit/J)
Closed-form analysis are given for both sum
rates and energy efficiency. We have derived 4
sufficient conditions when full-digital beam- Full-Digital-Simulation
forming outperforms hybrid beamforming in 2 Full-Digital-Analysis
terms of energy efficiency. Both analysis and Hybrid-Simulation
numerical results reveal that hybrid beam- Hybrid-Analysis

forming works well when the number of users 0

2 4 6 8 10 12 14
is small. Regarding the optimal choice of ADC b
resolution bits, have we proposed an algorithm
to search the optimal solution based on bisec-
tion methods. It can be drawn from the results, Fig. 5. Energy efficiency versus the ADC resolution bits, where N = 100,
the optimal ADC resolution bits of hybrid pu = 10 dB.
beamforming is slightly higher than that of
full-digital beamforming. Let us start with simplification of the re-
ceived signal expression. The diagonal ele-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
ments of HH H is given by
2
K L
This work was supported in part by the Key N 1 − j2π∆ ( n −1) cos θ kl
(HH H )( n , n ) = ∑∑ e g kl
Research & Development Plan of Jiangsu k= 1 =l 1 L N
Province (No. BE2018108), National Nature 1 K L (a)
∑∑ g kl
2 2
Science Foundation of China (Nos.61701198 = K ≈ K { g=
kl } K.
KL k= 1 =l 1
& 61772243), Nature Science Foundation where (a ) follows law of large numbers which
of Jiangsu Province (No.BK20170557),
shows the average value of a series of samples
Nature Science Foundation for Higher Ed-
approaches the statistical mean. From (7), we
ucation Institutions of Jiangsu Province of
have
China (No.17KJB510009), the open research R nq ,FD nq ,FD ≈ α (1 − α )(1 + pu K )I,
fund of National Mobile Communications
Research Laboratory, Southeast University α 2I + R n q ,FD n q ,FD
≈ [α + (α − α 2 ) pu K )]I.
(No.2018D13), Young Talent Project of Ji- Regarding VFD, it is obtained that
angsu University and Postgraduate Research VFD = α pu H H {α 2 pu HH H
& Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu
+ [α + (α − α 2 ) pu K )]I}−1
Province (No.SJCX18_0742).
=α pu CH A H {α 2 pu ACCH A H
APPENDIX A + [α + (α − α 2 ) pu K )]I}−1
Proof of Theorem 1 1
= CH A H ( ACCH A H + d FDI ) −1
α pu
The derivation of SINR FD can be divided into (b )
1
two steps: 1) to simplify the expression of the ≈ CH (CCH + d FDI ) −1 A H ,
α pu
received signal, especially VFD; 2) derivation
where d FD =[1 + (1 − α ) pu K ] / α pu , and (b) is
of the signal power and noise power.

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 obtained using A H A ≈ I. Denote hki as the (k , i ) -th element of H.
In order to get the approximate SINR, we Since
first derive the signal part as N 1 L

α p=
u VFD Hx
H
C (CC + d FDI ) A ACx H −1 H hki =
L N
∑ g kl e-j2π (i −1) ∆ cosθ kl
,
l =1

≈ CH (CCH + d FDI ) −1 Cx hki can be approximated by a complex Gauss-

 c1H (c1c1H
+ d FDI ) c1 x1  −1 ian random variable with zero mean and unit
  variance. Therefore, we have
=  
c H (c c H + d I ) −1 c x  1 N 1 N
 K K K FD K K (VP H )( k , k ) = ∑ | hki |= N ∑ | hki |
N i 1= Ni 1
H −1 H =
 (c1 c1 + d FD ) c1 c1 x1  (d )
  ≈ N {| hki |}
=  
(c H c + d ) −1 c H c x  π 1 Nπ
 K K FD K K K =N ⋅ = ,
where 2 2 2
N
2 1 1 N
∑=
N
c Hk c k
= g kl
N L
∑ g kl
L
2
≈ N.
(VP H )( k ,l ) = ∑ hli e − jφ = N ∑ hli e − jφ
N i 1=
ki

Ni 1
ki

=
L
=l 1 = Ll 1
(e)
which follows the law of large numbers. Then, ≈ N {hli e − jφki } =
0, for k ≠ l.
the signal power of the k-th user is given by where (d ) and (e) follows law of large
2
2 N number. Then it is straightforward to get
(c Hk c k d FD ) −1 c Hk c k
PS =+ ≈ .(17)
(d FD + N ) 2 Nπ
VP H ≈ I.
To handle the noise part, we first observe 2
H
VFD VFD =( ACCH A H + d FDI ) −2 Similar technique can be applied to
1
(c) VP HH H VPH, and it yields
≈ 2 CH (CCH + d FDI ) −2 C.
α pu (VP HH H VPH )( k , k )
K
where (c) follows that A H A = I. Therefore, = we | (VP H )( k , k ) |2 + ∑ | (VP H )( k ,i ) |2
have =i 1, i ≠ k

H (k ,k ) 1 K
1 N
(VFD VFD ) ≈ 2 c Hk (c k c kH + d FDI ) −2 c k ≈ Nπ / 4 + ∑ | ∑
− jφ
hij e kj |2
α pu i= 1, i ≠ k N j= 1
N K
1 N N
= .
∑ ∑ hij e kj ∑ hil e − jφkl
− jφ
α pu (d FD + N ) 2
2 = Nπ / 4 +
1, i ≠ k
i= N j=1 l=1
Then, the noise power of the k-th user is K
1 N
given by = Nπ / 4 + ∑  ∑ | hij |
2

1, i ≠ k  N j =
i= 1
=PN α 2 (VFD VFD
H (k ,k )
) H (k ,k )
+ (VFD R nq ,FD nq ,FD VFD )
1 N N

∑ hij e kj ∑ hil e − jφkl 
− jφ
d FD N +
≈ . N =j 1 =l 1, l ≠ j 
(d FD + N ) 2
≈ N π / 4 + K − 1,
(18)
Divide (17) by (18) gives (9). (VP HH H VPH )( k ,l )
K
Now let us derive the SINR of the hybrid
=H
beamforming scheme by starting with VP VP .
∑ (VP H )( k ,i ) (VP H )(i ,l )* ≈ 0, for k ≠ l.
i =1

It is easy to find out that Therefore, we have VP HH H VPH ≈ ( N π / 4

1 N jφij -jφij + K − 1)I.
(VP VPH )( k , k ) =
= ∑ e e 1,
N i =1 The covariance of the quantization noise is
1 N jφki -jφli approximated by
(VP VPH =
)( k ,l ) ∑ e e ≈ 0, for k ≠ l.
N i =1 α (1 − α )diag( pu VP HH H VPH + VP VPH )
R nq ,H nq ,H =
Therefore, we have VP VPH ≈ I K. ≈ α (1 − α )[ pu ( N π / 4 + K − 1) + 1]I,

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and the baseband beamforming matrix is ap-
proximated by
VB = α pu H H VPH (α 2 pu VP HH H VPH
+ α 2 VP VPH + R nq ,H nq ,H ) −1
≈ (α pu ) −1 N π / 2( N π / 4
+ K − 1 + d H ) −1 I,
where
1 + (1 − α )[ pu ( N π / 4 + K − 1) + 1]
dH = . [8] X. Zhang, A. F. Molisch, and S.-Y. Kung, “Vari-
α pu
Therefore, we are able to calculate the sig-
nal and noise power of the k-th user, respec-
tively, as
PS = α 2 pu | (VBVP H )( k , k ) |2
(19)
N 2π 2
≈ ( N π / 4 + K − 1 + d H ) −2 ,
16
and
PN = α 2 (VBVP VPH VBH )( k , k )
+(VBR nq ,H nq ,H VBH )( k , k ) (20)
d H ( N π / 4 + K − 1)
≈ .
( Nπ / 4 + K − 1 + d H )2
Divide (19) by (20) gives (10) and thus
completes the proof of Theorem 1.
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