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Scalability Aspects of Cell-Free Massive MIMO | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Scalability Aspects of Cell-Free Massive MIMO


Abstract:

Ubiquitous cell-free massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) combines massive MIMO technology and user-centric transmission in a distributed architecture. All the a...Show More

Abstract:

Ubiquitous cell-free massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) combines massive MIMO technology and user-centric transmission in a distributed architecture. All the access points (APs) in the network cooperate to jointly and coherently serve a smaller number of users in the same time-frequency resource. However, this coordination needs significant amounts of control signalling which introduces additional overhead, while data co-processing increases the back/front-haul requirements. Hence, the notion that the “whole world” could constitute one network, and that all APs would act as a single base station, is not scalable. In this study, we address some system scalability aspects of cell-free massive MIMO that have been neglected in literature until now. In particular, we propose and evaluate a solution related to data processing, network topology and power control. Results indicate that our proposed framework achieves full scalability at the cost of a modest performance loss compared to the canonical form of cell-free massive MIMO.
Date of Conference: 20-24 May 2019
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 15 July 2019
ISBN Information:

ISSN Information:

Conference Location: Shanghai, China

I. Introduction

Coordinated distributed wireless systems [1] leverage signal co-processing at multiple access points (APs) to guarantee high connectivity, reduce inter-cell interference and improve the user experience. Connectivity is enhanced thanks to the shorter AP-to-user distance; the joint coherent transmission from geographically distributed APs yields macro-diversity gain; and the coordination enables APs to select transmit strategies jointly (by sharing channel state information) in order to reduce inter-cell interference.

References

References is not available for this document.