9,688 research outputs found
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
On Low-Resolution ADCs in Practical 5G Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO Systems
Nowadays, millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) systems is a favorable candidate for the fifth generation (5G) cellular
systems. However, a key challenge is the high power consumption imposed by its
numerous radio frequency (RF) chains, which may be mitigated by opting for
low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), whilst tolerating a
moderate performance loss. In this article, we discuss several important issues
based on the most recent research on mmWave massive MIMO systems relying on
low-resolution ADCs. We discuss the key transceiver design challenges including
channel estimation, signal detector, channel information feedback and transmit
precoding. Furthermore, we introduce a mixed-ADC architecture as an alternative
technique of improving the overall system performance. Finally, the associated
challenges and potential implementations of the practical 5G mmWave massive
MIMO system {with ADC quantizers} are discussed.Comment: to appear in IEEE Communications Magazin
Design and Performance Analysis of Non-Coherent Detection Systems with Massive Receiver Arrays
Harvesting the gain of a large number of antennas in a mmWave band has mainly
been relying on the costly operation of channel state information (CSI)
acquisition and cumbersome phase shifters. Recent works have started to
investigate the possibility to use receivers based on energy detection (ED),
where a single data stream is decoded based on the channel and noise energy.
The asymptotic features of the massive receiver array lead to a system where
the impact of the noise becomes predictable due to a noise hardening effect.
This in effect extends the communication range compared to the receiver with a
small number of antennas, as the latter is limited by the unpredictability of
the additive noise. When the channel has a large number of spatial degrees of
freedom, the system becomes robust to imperfect channel knowledge due to
channel hardening. We propose two detection methods based on the instantaneous
and average channel energy, respectively. Meanwhile, we design the detection
thresholds based on the asymptotic properties of the received energy.
Differently from existing works, we analyze the scaling law behavior of the
symbol-error-rate (SER). When the instantaneous channel energy is known, the
performance of ED approaches that of the coherent detection in high SNR
scenarios. When the receiver relies on the average channel energy, our
performance analysis is based on the exact SER, rather than an approximation.
It is shown that the logarithm of SER decreases linearly as a function of the
number of antennas. Additionally, a saturation appears at high SNR for PAM
constellations of order larger than two, due to the uncertainty on the channel
energy. Simulation results show that ED, with a much lower complexity, achieves
promising performance both in Rayleigh fading channels and in sparse channels
Efficient DSP and Circuit Architectures for Massive MIMO: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions
Massive MIMO is a compelling wireless access concept that relies on the use
of an excess number of base-station antennas, relative to the number of active
terminals. This technology is a main component of 5G New Radio (NR) and
addresses all important requirements of future wireless standards: a great
capacity increase, the support of many simultaneous users, and improvement in
energy efficiency. Massive MIMO requires the simultaneous processing of signals
from many antenna chains, and computational operations on large matrices. The
complexity of the digital processing has been viewed as a fundamental obstacle
to the feasibility of Massive MIMO in the past. Recent advances on
system-algorithm-hardware co-design have led to extremely energy-efficient
implementations. These exploit opportunities in deeply-scaled silicon
technologies and perform partly distributed processing to cope with the
bottlenecks encountered in the interconnection of many signals. For example,
prototype ASIC implementations have demonstrated zero-forcing precoding in real
time at a 55 mW power consumption (20 MHz bandwidth, 128 antennas, multiplexing
of 8 terminals). Coarse and even error-prone digital processing in the antenna
paths permits a reduction of consumption with a factor of 2 to 5. This article
summarizes the fundamental technical contributions to efficient digital signal
processing for Massive MIMO. The opportunities and constraints on operating on
low-complexity RF and analog hardware chains are clarified. It illustrates how
terminals can benefit from improved energy efficiency. The status of technology
and real-life prototypes discussed. Open challenges and directions for future
research are suggested.Comment: submitted to IEEE transactions on signal processin
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