Near-Field Ultra-Wideband mmWave Channel Characterization Using Successive Cancellation Beamspace UCA Algorithm

Of the wide palette of 5G features, ultra-wide bandwidth and large-scale antenna configuration are regarded as the essential enabling technology components for millimeter wave (mmWave) communication. Accurate knowledge of delay and angle information of multipath components is essential for many applications in mmWave systems. There is a strong need for a low computation-cost channel estimation algorithm for such systems, where typically adopted far-field and narrowband assumptions might be violated. In this paper, a generic yet novel beamspace uniform circular array (UCA) beamforming algorithm with successive cancellation scheme is proposed to jointly detect the impinging azimuth angle and delay of each multipath component. The proposed algorithm is computationally cheap and it works for ultra-wideband UCA systems in the near-field conditions as well as the traditional narrowband systems in the far-field conditions. Both numerical simulations and experimental validation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithm, compared to the state-of-art works.