Continuous aperture phased MIMO: A new architecture for optimum line-of-sight links

We propose a new communication architecture - continuous aperture phased MIMO - that combines the elements of MIMO, continuous aperture antennas, and phased arrays, for achieving the capacity of line-of-sight (LoS) links. CAP-MIMO is based on a hybrid analog-digital transceiver architecture that employs a novel antenna array structure - a high-resolution discrete lens array - to enable a continuous aperture phased-MIMO operation with a low-complexity analog-digital interface. Our focus is on millimeter-wave (60-100GHz) LoS links for high-rate (1-100Gb/s) applications. We propose a framework for modeling and analyzing a LoS link in beamspace, discuss the key elements of the CAP-MIMO system, and present results on its significant capacity advantages over two state-of-the-art designs: i) systems that employ continuous aperture “dish” antennas for high power efficiency but no spatial multiplexing gain, and ii) MIMO systems that use discrete antenna arrays for multiplexing gain but suffer in power efficiency.