5G Cellular User Equipment: Hardware Design and System Architecture

This paper delves into the intricacies of 5G cellular user equipment (UE) hardware design, recognizing the explosive growth and advancements in the field. It begins by examining the contemporary wireless UE hardware design, pointing out critical constraints on circuits and systems. The study then proposes a new, highly reconfigurable system architecture for 5G cellular user equipment, known as distributed phased arrays based MIMO (DPA-MIMO), which is designed to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, the paper presents link budget calculations and data throughput numerical results to evaluate the proposed architecture's performance. The exploration covers various aspects, including battery design, circuit and system design, antenna design, and the trade-offs involved in integrating various wireless technologies within the limited space of a mobile handset. The paper highlights the shift towards millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies to overcome sub-6 GHz challenges, presenting a detailed overview of the design process and the benefits of the DPA-MIMO architecture.