Energy efficiency of mmWave massive MIMO precoding with low-resolution DACs

With the congestion of the sub-6 GHz spectrum, the interest in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating on millimeter wave spectrum grows. In order to reduce the power consumption of such massive MIMO systems, hybrid analog/digital transceivers and application of low-resolution digital-to-analog/analog-to-digital converters have been recently proposed. In this work, we investigate the energy efficiency of quantized hybrid transmitters equipped with a fully/partially-connected phase-shifting network composed of active/passive phase-shifters and compare it to that of quantized digital precoders. We introduce a quantized single-user MIMO system model based on an additive quantization noise approximation considering realistic power consumption and loss models to evaluate the spectral and energy efficiencies of the transmit precoding methods. Simulation results show that partially-connected hybrid precoders can be more energy-efficient compared to digital precoders, while fully-connected hybrid precoders exhibit poor energy efficiency in general. Also, the topology of phase-shifting components offers an energy-spectral efficiency trade-off: active phase-shifters provide higher data rates, while passive phase-shifters maintain better energy efficiency.