Millimeter-wave RF Front-Ends for Enhanced Mobile Communications towards 5G. An industry view

High interest in millimeter-wave bands has risen in the recent years due to the enormous amount of under-utilized bandwidth that lies in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The significant advantages offered by the propagation characteristics in terms of frequency re-usability and large channel bandwidths, make millimeter-wave suitable for the very high capacities required by 5G enhanced Mobile BroadBand (10 Gpbs peak throughput and 10 Mbps/m2) both for the Radio Access Network and the Backhaul. The millimeter-wave bands can be suitably used for the access networks to increase the throughput to the User Equipment and the backhaul/front-haul of the base stations. At the same time the use of millimeter-wave bands, thanks to very compact antenna size that makes products ``blend'' in the environment, allows the densification of the cells in dense urban scenarios. 5G key requirements driving evolution of mobile access and wireless x-haul to millimeter-wave and sub-millimeter ranges Analysis of the most important requirements of 5G to drive the trends and technology at (sub-) millimeter-wave bands for wireless backhaul / front-haul network Millimeter-wave access - Application scenarios and potential bands for 5G at millimeter-wave - Massive MIMO architectures comparison - Analogue, Hybrid and Full Digital beam-forming architectures - From low to very high EIRP antenna arrays - Front-end modules - Antenna arrays - Integration technologies - Front-end modules of the new spectrum above 90 GHz and innovative ways to use it