In the past few years, millimeter wave (mmWave) communication has attracted significant attention both from industry and academia, due to the large available spectrum at mmWave frequency bands. With the significantly increased communication bandwidth, mmWave communication is able to achieve tremendous data rate (e.g. on the order of dozens of Gbps) to satisfy the ever‐increasing traffic demand in 5G‐and‐beyond wireless networks. This article aims to give an introductory overview on the fundamentals of mmWave communication, including the general background of mmWave systems, the propagation characteristics of mmWave channels, followed by the design of hybrid antenna architecture to balance the trade‐off between the hardware cost and the system performance. The state of the art for the design of hybrid precoding/combining and channel acquisition for mmWave systems will be highlighted.