Noteworthy challenges and ripe opportunities are unfolding as 5G cellular systems rollout and future 6G systems are imagined. Such systems make use of high carrier frequencies, wide bandwidths, and dense antenna arrays to meet the high-rate, low-latency demands of modern applications. In this talk, I highlight how next-generation millimeter wave (mmWave) transceivers can be upgraded with full-duplex capability: the long-sought ability to simultaneously transmit and receive over the same frequency spectrum. By combining theory and practice, I introduce two novel enablers of full-duplex mmWave systems that rely solely on beamforming to cancel self-interference to levels near or even below the noise floor, all while maintaining backward compatibility with beam alignment protocols in 5G. I demonstrate the effectiveness of my proposed solutions using 28 GHz and 60 GHz phased arrays, the first and only real-world evaluations of their kind. I conclude this talk by forecasting future research directions that will transform the next decade of wireless connectivity.
Ian P. Roberts is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is part of the 6G@UT Research Center within the Wireless Networking and Communications Group. He has been a visiting student at Arizona State University and Yonsei University. He has industry experience developing and prototyping wireless technologies at AT&T Labs, Amazon, GenXComm (startup), and Sandia National Labs. He is the developer of MIMO for MATLAB, a free software package for wireless research and education. His research interests are in the theory and implementation of millimeter wave systems, full-duplex, and other next-generation technologies for wireless communication and sensing. He is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.