Decoder Design for Massive-MIMO Systems Using Deep Learning

Designing a massive multiple-input multiple-output (M-MIMO) system is complex, time-consuming, and challenging. Conventional MIMO decoders are either inefficient or complex to implement for M-MIMO scenarios. Deep learning (DL) has recently emerged to perform many complex operations more efficiently within a shorter time. In this article, a DL-based iterative network (DLNet) has been proposed for signal decoding in M-MIMO systems. The proposed DLNet decoder is a 40 layer deep neural network (DNN) that can decode M-MIMO signals for uplink Rayleigh and correlated MIMO channels. With the knowledge of the received signals and the M-MIMO channels, the proposed DLNet decoder decodes the messages of all the users. The DLNet considers complex-valued Rayleigh and correlated MIMO channels while decoding. Its training converges faster than other available deep learning (DL) based MIMO decoders. During simulations, the required number of DNN layers, training iterations, and other network parameters are estimated to improve the proposed decoder's performance. In the M-MIMO perspective, the proposed DLNet has been evaluated for symbol-error-rate (SER) performance, algorithm complexity, and runtime requirement. Simulation results show that the SER of the proposed DLNet decoder performs better by at least 2 dB than other M-MIMO decoding techniques. The DLNet consumes 800 times less time during decoding than other MIMO decoders for equal transmitting and receiving antenna configurations. At the same time, it has 13 times fewer trainable parameters than the available detection-network algorithm.