Massive MIMO is a Reality -- What is Next? Five Promising Research Directions for Antenna Arrays

Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is no longer a "wild" or "promising" concept for future cellular networks - in 2018 it became a reality. Base stations (BSs) with 64 fully digital transceiver chains were commercially deployed in several countries, the key ingredients of Massive MIMO have made it into the 5G standard, the signal processing methods required to achieve unprecedented spectral efficiency have been developed, and the limitation due to pilot contamination has been resolved. Even the development of fully digital Massive MIMO arrays for mmWave frequencies - once viewed prohibitively complicated and costly - is well underway. In a few years, Massive MIMO with fully digital transceivers will be a mainstream feature at both sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequencies. In this paper, we explain how the first chapter of the Massive MIMO research saga has come to an end, while the story has just begun. The coming wide-scale deployment of BSs with massive antenna arrays opens the door to a brand new world where spatial processing capabilities are omnipresent. In addition to mobile broadband services, the antennas can be used for other communication applications, such as low-power machine-type or ultra-reliable communications, as well as non-communication applications such as radar, sensing and positioning. We outline five new Massive MIMO related research directions: Extremely large aperture arrays, Holographic Massive MIMO, Six-dimensional positioning, Large-scale MIMO radar, and Intelligent Massive MIMO.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Digital Signal Processin

Co-existence Between a Radar System and a Massive MIMO Wireless Cellular System

In this paper we consider the uplink of a massive MIMO communication system using 5G New Radio-compliant multiple access, which is to co-exist with a radar system using the same frequency band. We propose a system model taking into account the reverberation (clutter) produced by the radar system at the massive MIMO receiver. Then, we propose several linear receivers for uplink data-detection, ranging by the simple channel-matched beamformer to the zero-forcing and linear minimum mean square error receivers for clutter disturbance rejection. Our results show that the clutter may have a strong effect on the performance of the cellular communication system, but the use of large-scale antenna arrays at the base station is key to provide increased robustness against it, at least as far as data-detection is concerned.Comment: To be presented at 2018 IEEE SPAWC, Kalamata, Greece, June 201

Peak to average power ratio based spatial spectrum sensing for cognitive radio systems

The recent convergence of wireless standards for incorporation of spatial dimension in wireless systems has made spatial spectrum sensing based on Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the received signal, a promising approach. This added dimension is principally exploited for stream multiplexing, user multiplexing and spatial diversity. Considering such a wireless environment for primary users, we propose an algorithm for spectrum sensing by secondary users which are also equipped with multiple antennas. The proposed spatial spectrum sensing algorithm is based on the PAPR of the spatially received signals. Simulation results show the improved performance once the information regarding spatial diversity of the primary users is incorporated in the proposed algorithm. Moreover, through simulations a better performance is achieved by using different diversity schemes and different parameters like sensing time and scanning interval