Analog Computing for Signal Processing and Communications -- Part II: Toward Gigantic MIMO Beamforming

Abstract

Analog-domain operations offer a promising solution to accelerating signal processing and enabling future multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications with thousands of antennas. In Part I of this paper, we have introduced a microwave linear analog computer (MiLAC) as an analog computer that processes microwave signals linearly, demonstrating its potential to reduce the computational complexity of specific signal processing tasks. In Part II of this paper, we extend these benefits to wireless communications, showcasing how MiLAC enables gigantic MIMO beamforming entirely in the analog domain. MiLAC-aided beamforming enables the maximum flexibility and performance of digital beamforming, while significantly reducing hardware costs by minimizing the number of radio-frequency (RF) chains and only relying on low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs). In addition, it eliminates per-symbol operations by completely avoiding digital-domain processing and remarkably reduces the computational complexity of zero-forcing (ZF), which scales quadratically with the number of antennas instead of cubically. It also processes signals with fixed matrices, e.g., the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), directly in the analog domain. Numerical results show that it can perform ZF and DFT with a computational complexity reduction of up to $1.5\times 10^4$ and $4.0\times 10^7$ times, respectively, compared to digital beamforming.