A Real-Time mmWave Communication Testbed with Phase Noise Cancellation

As the spectrum under 6 GHz is being depleted, pushing wireless communications onto millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies is a trend that promises multi-Gbps data rate. mmWave is therefore considered as a key technology for 5G wireless systems and has attracted tremendous research efforts. The booming research on mmWave necessitates a reconfigurable mmWave testbed that can be used to prototype and validate new research ideas in real wireless environments. In this paper, we develop an easy-to-use mmWave testbed using commercial off-the-shelf devices (USRP and 60 GHz Tx/Rx RF frontends) and open-source software package (GNU Radio). A key component of our testbed is a phase noise cancellation (PNC) scheme, which can significantly reduce the phase noise at the receiver by leveraging the pilot signal inserted at the transmitter. We have implemented a simplified version of IEEE 802.11 PHY on this mmWave testbed. Experimental results show that, with the PNC scheme, our testbed can achieve -20 dB EVM data transmission for real-time video streaming.