Solar power enabled analog-only small cell unit with millimeter-Wave wireless backhaul for mobile communication system

This paper presents a completely wireless small cell unit for mobile communication systems with lowest possible power consumption. It consists of a simple frequency conversion from millimeter-wave backhaul to access frequencies based on the self-heterodyning concept with only analog amplifiers as active components. This enables an energy autonomous operation based on tiny solar panels, greatly simplifying its deployment. The sufficient linearity and phase noise performance at 60GHz was proven with measurements of an LTE signal easily meeting the access link 3GPP ACLR and EVM requirements. Moreover, a successful system test of our full end-to-end LT E mobile communication system with a commercial user device proved the expected and required high data rates.