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Full-spectrum cell-free RAN for 6G systems: system design and experimental results

  • Research Paper
  • Special Topic: Spectrum, Coverage, and Enabling Technologies for Intelligent 6G
  • Published:
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Abstract

With distributed transceivers and scalable cooperative transmission, cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) technology eliminates the “cells” of traditional mobile communications, thereby significantly improving the performance of wireless networks. CF-mMIMO is considered as a major technical tool for achieving the key performance indicators of sixth generation (6G) mobile communication systems. In this paper, a scalable implementation architecture for CF-mMIMO is proposed, based on which potential key technologies such as channel information acquisition, transceiver design, dynamic user and access point association, and novel duplexing are introduced. Finally, based on low-cost commercial access points, a CF-mMIMO testbed with 64 transmit and receive antennas is developed, and the performance of the distributed receiver design is evaluated.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by National Key Research and Development Program (Grant Nos. 2020YFB1807205, 2020YFB1806608), Research and Development Project in the Key Areas of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2020B0101120003), Southeast-China Mobile Research Institute Joint Innovation Center and by Major Key Project of PCL (Grant No. PCL2021A01-2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Dongming Wang, Xiaohu You, Yongming Huang, Wei Xu, Jiamin Li, Pengcheng Zhu, Yanxiang Jiang, Yang Cao, Ziyang Zhang, Qingji Jiang & Kang Zheng

  2. Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing, 211100, China

    Dongming Wang, Xiaohu You, Yongming Huang, Wei Xu, Jiamin Li, Yang Cao, Xinjiang Xia, Ziyang Zhang, Pan Wang & Dongjie Liu

  3. China Mobile Research Institute, Beijing, 100053, China

    Mengting Lou, Jing Jin & Qixing Wang

  4. School of Engineering, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NT, UK

    Jiangzhou Wang

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  1. Dongming Wang
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  2. Xiaohu You
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  3. Yongming Huang
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  4. Wei Xu
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  10. Ziyang Zhang
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  11. Qingji Jiang
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  14. Kang Zheng
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  15. Mengting Lou
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  16. Jing Jin
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  17. Qixing Wang
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  18. Jiangzhou Wang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaohu You, Yang Cao or Ziyang Zhang.

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Wang, D., You, X., Huang, Y. et al. Full-spectrum cell-free RAN for 6G systems: system design and experimental results. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 66, 130305 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-022-3664-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-022-3664-x

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