Capacity of 60 GHz Wireless Communications Based on QAM

Abstract

With apparent advantages of the several GHz license-free spectrums, 10 W maximum transmit power, and so forth, 60 GHz wireless communication technology has become the first choice for Gbps level short-range wireless communications. This paper researches 60 GHz wireless communications over the additive white Gaussian noise channel. Channel capacity with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is investigated for the unlicensed 59–64 GHz radio spectrum set aside by FCC. Moreover, the capacity with QAM is compared to that with phase shift keying (PSK). It is shown that QAM is capable of providing Gbps data rate and outperforms PSK especially when the modulation order is large. The results prove that QAM is an attractive scheme for 60 GHz wireless communications.