Localization Error Bounds for 5G mmWave Systems Under I/Q Imbalance

Location awareness is expected to play a significant role in 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems. One of the basic elements of these systems is quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), which has in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) modulators. It is not uncommon for transceiver hardware to exhibit an imbalance in the I/Q components, causing degradation in data rate and signal quality. Under an amplitude and phase imbalance model at both the transmitter and receiver, 2D positioning performance in 5G mmWave systems is considered. Towards that, we derive the position and orientation error bounds and study the effects of the I/Q imbalance parameters on the derived bounds. The numerical results reveal that I/Q imbalance impacts the performance similarly, whether it occurs at the transmitter or the receiver, and can cause a degradation up to 12% in position and orientation estimation accuracy.