Distributed Massive MIMO via all-Digital Radio Over Fiber

A crucial challenge in the implementation of distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architectures is to provide phase coherence while, at the same time, limit the complexity of the remote-radio heads (RRHs), which is important for cost-efficient scalability. To address this challenge, we present in this paper a phase-coherent distributed MIMO architecture, based on off-the-shelf, low-cost components. In the proposed architecture, up- and down-conversion are carried out at the central unit (CU). The RRHs are connected to the CU by means of optical fibers carrying oversampled radio-frequency (RF) 1-bit signals. In the downlink, the 1-bit signal is generated via sigma-delta modulation. At the RRH, the RF signal is recovered from the 1-bit signal through a bandpass filter and a power amplifier, and then fed to an antenna. In the uplink, the 1-bit signal is generated by a comparator whose inputs are the low-noise-amplified received RF signal and a suitably designed dither signal. The performance of the proposed architecture is evaluated with satisfactory results both via simulation and measurements from a testbed.