  Due to heavy reliance of millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless systems on
directional links, Beamforming (BF) with high-dimensional arrays is essential
for cellular systems in these frequencies. How to perform the array processing
in a power efficient manner is a fundamental challenge. Analog and hybrid BF
require fewer analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), but can only communicate in
a small number of directions at a time,limiting directional search, spatial
multiplexing and control signaling. Digital BF enables flexible spatial
processing, but must be operated at a low quantization resolution to stay
within reasonable power levels. This paper presents a simple additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN) model to assess the effect of low resolution quantization
of cellular system capacity. Simulations with this model reveal that at
moderate resolutions (3-4 bits per ADC), there is negligible loss in downlink
cellular capacity from quantization. In essence, the low-resolution ADCs limit
the high SNR, where cellular systems typically do not operate. The findings
suggest that low-resolution fully digital BF architectures can be power
efficient, offer greatly enhanced control plane functionality and comparable
data plane performance to analog BF.
