Massive MIMO, also known as very-large MIMO or large-scale antenna systems,
is a new technique that potentially can offer large network capacities in
multi-user scenarios. With a massive MIMO system, we consider the case where a
base station equipped with a large number of antenna elements simultaneously
serves multiple single-antenna users in the same time-frequency resource. So
far, investigations are mostly based on theoretical channels with independent
and identically distributed (i.i.d.) complex Gaussian coefficients, i.e.,
i.i.d. Rayleigh channels. Here, we investigate how massive MIMO performs in
channels measured in real propagation environments. Channel measurements were
performed at 2.6 GHz using a virtual uniform linear array (ULA) which has a
physically large aperture, and a practical uniform cylindrical array (UCA)
which is more compact in size, both having 128 antenna ports. Based on
measurement data, we illustrate channel behavior of massive MIMO in three
representative propagation conditions, and evaluate the corresponding
performance. The investigation shows that the measured channels, for both array
types, allow us to achieve performance close to that in i.i.d. Rayleigh
channels. It is concluded that in real propagation environments we have
characteristics that can allow for efficient use of massive MIMO, i.e., the
theoretical advantages of this new technology can also be harvested in real
channels.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 201