Design of Full-Duplex Millimeter-Wave Integrated Access and Backhaul Networks

One of the key technologies for the future cellular networks is full-duplex (FD) enabled Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) networks operating in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies. The main challenge in realizing the FD-IAB networks is mitigating the impact of self-interference (SI) in the wideband mmWave frequencies. In this article, we first introduce the 3GPP IAB network architectures and wideband mmWave channel models. By utilizing the subarray-based hybrid precoding scheme, at the FD-IAB-node, multiuser interference is mitigated using zero-forcing (ZF) at the transmitter, whereas the residual SI after successfully deploying antenna and analog cancellation is canceled by minimum mean square error (MMSE) baseband combiner at the receiver. The spectral efficiency (SE) is evaluated for the RF insertion loss (RFIL) with different kinds of phase shifters and the channel uncertainty. Simulation results show that, in the presence of the RFIL, the almost double SE, which is close to that obtained from fully connected hybrid precoding, can be achieved as compared with half-duplex systems, when the uncertainties are of low strength.