Power Efficient Multi-Carrier Baseband Processing for 5G and 6G Wireless

Power consumption is one of the significant challenges in millimeter wave (mmWave) systems due to the need to support wide bandwidths and large numbers of antennas. This paper explores energy efficient implementations of the baseband trans-receiver components for a multi-carrier 3GPP New Radio (NR) system. The analysis considers key components including channel selection filters, digital beamforming and FFT engines for the OFDM processing. A methodology is presented for optimizing bit widths in various components, which is critical in low power designs. Fully digital and analog beamforming architectures are also compared. Preliminary power estimates are provided using a TSMC 28 nm process for a 400 MHz system at 28 GHz similar to 5G systems today and a hypothetical 1.6 GHz system at 140 GHz for potential 6G deployment.