5,968 research outputs found
Cell-Free Massive MIMO versus Small Cells
A Cell-Free Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) system comprises a
very large number of distributed access points (APs)which simultaneously serve
a much smaller number of users over the same time/frequency resources based on
directly measured channel characteristics. The APs and users have only one
antenna each. The APs acquire channel state information through time-division
duplex operation and the reception of uplink pilot signals transmitted by the
users. The APs perform multiplexing/de-multiplexing through conjugate
beamforming on the downlink and matched filtering on the uplink. Closed-form
expressions for individual user uplink and downlink throughputs lead to max-min
power control algorithms. Max-min power control ensures uniformly good service
throughout the area of coverage. A pilot assignment algorithm helps to mitigate
the effects of pilot contamination, but power control is far more important in
that regard.
Cell-Free Massive MIMO has considerably improved performance with respect to
a conventional small-cell scheme, whereby each user is served by a dedicated
AP, in terms of both 95%-likely per-user throughput and immunity to shadow
fading spatial correlation. Under uncorrelated shadow fading conditions, the
cell-free scheme provides nearly 5-fold improvement in 95%-likely per-user
throughput over the small-cell scheme, and 10-fold improvement when shadow
fading is correlated.Comment: EEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, accepted for publicatio
- …