Proof-of-concept of flexible massive MIMO beamforming at 2.4 GHz

The next wireless communication system will support flexible beamforming and beam-sweeping to realize high capacity demands. This can be achieved with Massive MIMO systems realizing high beamforming gains as well as higher order multi-user multiplexing. Real proof-of-concepts are required to evaluate algorithms and show performance gains. In general, prototyping of M-MIMO systems is challenging, since many transceiver chains have to be calibrated and data streams synchronized. In this paper, we perform measurements in an indoor environment using a real M-MIMO SDR system with 16 active antenna ports. System-level simulations on recorded measurement data highlight downlink throughput results for individual users.

I. Introduction

Multi-antenna techniques such as Massive-MIMO (M-MIMO) and beamforming are commonly considered as key technologies for future cellular communications. They target to solve the capacity requirements for enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services, which are predicted to increase by a factor of 10,000 for 5G networks. Advanced beam management including beamforming and beam-sweeping algorithms for low and high frequencies belong to the baseline concepts of multi-antenna schemes discussed as candidate technologies for 5G [1] or New Radio (NR). The targeted user data rates for eMBB in 5G are ranging from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps in the downlink, and 25 Mbps to 500 Mbps in the uplink direction. In these networks, M-MIMO is one of the building blocks to fulfill such high capacity demands.