FPGA-Based Hybrid Beamforming under Quantization and Phase Resolution Constraints

Zhang M, Weigel R, Franchi N, Reißland T (2026)

Publication Language: English

Publication Status: Accepted

Publication Type: Unpublished / Preprint

Future Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2026

Pages Range: 5

Event location: Hongkong

Abstract

This paper presents a quantization-aware implementation of a hybrid beamforming (HBF) receiver on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications, addressing practical hardware constraints such as fixed-point arithmetic and the limited resolution of analog phase shifters. The proposed design incorporates input normalization and a baseband refinement strategy to enhance computational robustness and index selection accuracy under low bit-width settings, thereby preserving spectral efficiency.

The system adopts a co-optimized architecture that partitions computation between the FPGA and the ARM processor, leveraging the structure of the HBF algorithm to enable efficient hardware acceleration without compromising accuracy. We design and evaluate multiple FPGA implementations with varying degrees of parallelism, highlighting clear trade-offs between latency and resource usage. Even in the slowest configuration and including data transfer overhead, the proposed system significantly outperforms ARM-based software processing in execution time.

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How to cite

APA:

Zhang, M., Weigel, R., Franchi, N., & Reißland, T. (2026). FPGA-Based Hybrid Beamforming under Quantization and Phase Resolution Constraints. (Unpublished, Accepted).

MLA:

Zhang, Mengyu, et al. FPGA-Based Hybrid Beamforming under Quantization and Phase Resolution Constraints. Unpublished, Accepted. 2026.

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