MRC SC-FDMA scheme performance evaluation based on measurements at 30Â GHz for 5G communications

Millimeter-wave band between 30-300 GHz frequencies combined with SC-FDMA are promoted to be a potential technology enabler for 5G mobile network in the uplink. So, in this paper an MRC SC-FDMA scheme based on measurement at 30 GHz is proposed for 5G system. Measurements were taken between three buildings under a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenario for a path length of 183m. The measured impulse response was used to evaluate the PAPR, the BER and the channel capacity. A MRC combiner is used to maximize the instantaneous SNR at the output of SIMO schemes. Simulation results show a PAPR gain of 3.3 dB for the MRC-ISC-FDMA over MRC OFDMA system. The MRC SIMO (1x3) provides a BER gain of 5.2 and 4.4 dB over the traditional ISC-FDMA and LSC-FDMA respectively. Moreover, channel capacity simulations corroborate the significant increases of capacity with the increasing of the number of antennas at the receiver (achievable date rate of 6.48 Gbps at SNR = 15 dB in SIMO 1 × 3 configuration). These results validate the viability of outdoor mm-waves link (30 GHz) under NLOS conditions for radio access transmission, where high transmission efficiency and data rates could be achieved. Hence, these results motivate the use of MRC SC-FDMA waveform for 5G mobile communications in the uplink.