Analog Beamforming Aided by Full-Dimension One-Bit Chains

This paper investigates the design of analog beam-forming at the receiver in millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, aided by full digital chains featuring 1-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). We advocate utilizing full digital chains to facilitate rapid beam acquisition for subsequent communication, even without prior knowledge of the training pilots. To balance energy consumption and implementation costs, we opt for 1-bit ADCs. We propose a two-step maximum likelihood (ML)-based algorithm to estimate angles of arrival (AoAs) and provide the design of analog beam-forming to maximize the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For narrowband coherent channels, we estimate multiple AoAs and propose a beamforming approach that incorporates all estimated AoAs. For wideband channels, we propose beamforming towards the direction that captures significant energy from all clusters. The effectiveness of the narrowband beamforming scheme is validated through synthetic tests, while the wideband beamforming scheme is evaluated under the 3GPP clustered-delay-line (CDL)-C channel model.