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Low-Cost Massive MIMO: Pilot Length and ADC Resolution

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Journal of Communications and Information Networks

Abstract

When designing an energy efficient massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system where each receiver antenna is equipped with a low-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC), the number of base station (BS) antennas and quantization bits are generally two mutually conflicting system parameters. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of the number of BS antennas and ADC resolution in quantized massive MIMO systems, assuming imperfect channel state information (CSI). A tractable approximate expression for the uplink sum spectral efficiency (SE) using maximal ratio combining (MRC) receivers is derived, based on which the pilot length which maximizes the sum SE is put forward. Considering the effect of ADCs, a realistic model of total power consumption is given subsequently. Capitalizing on it, we formulate the optimization problem of selecting the number of BS antennas and ADC resolution to maximize the sum SE under a total power consumption constraint. Our results show that more pilot symbols should be assigned for massive MIMO systems with low-resolution ADCs, especially for the receivers with one-bit quantizers. Moreover, the results show the trade-off between the number of BS antennas and quantization bits. Numerical results suggest that there exists an optimal ADC resolution in massive MIMO systems, while lower quantization bits may cause a substantial degradation of the SE performance and higher one will consume more power.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

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

    Dan Qiao, Xi Yang & Shi Jin

  2. School of Computer Science and Educational Software, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Weiqiang Tan

  3. Institute of Communications Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan, China

    Chaokai Wen

Authors
  1. Dan Qiao
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  2. Xi Yang
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  3. Weiqiang Tan
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  4. Chaokai Wen
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  5. Shi Jin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shi Jin.

Additional information

This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSFC) for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (No. 61625106), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61531011) and the Project of Educational Commission of Guangdong Province of China (No. 2017KQNCX155). The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was W. Zhang.

Dan Qiao was born in Jiangsu, China, in 1991. She received her B.S. degree and the M.S. degree from the School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China in 2014 and 2017 respectively. Her main research interests include massive MIMO systems, and low resolution ADCs.

Xi Yang received her B.S. degree and the M.S. degree from Southeast University, Nanjing, China in 2013 and 2016 respectively. She is currently working toward her Ph.D. degree with the School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University. Her main research interests include massive MIMO system prototyping, beam training and channel estimation in millimeter wave, and millimeter wave system prototyping.

Weiqiang Tan received his Ph.D. degree from the National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing, China, in 2017. He received his M.S. degree from Chengdu University of Information Technology, China, in 2013. From 2016 to 2017, he was a visiting Ph.D student with the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom. He is currently with the School of Computer Science and Educational Software, Guangzhou University, China. His research interests include massive MIMO system and Millimeter wave wireless communication.

Chaokai Wen (S’00-M’04) received his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Communications Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, China, in 2004. He was with Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu, Taiwan, China and MediaTek Inc., Hsinchu, Taiwan, China, from 2004 to 2009. He is currently an Associate Professor of the Institute of Communications Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His research interests center around the optimization in wireless multimedia networks.

Shi Jin (S’06-M’07) [corresponding author] received his B.S. degree in communications engineering from Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, China, in 1996; his M.S. degree from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China, in 2003; and his Ph.D. degree in communications and information systems from Southeast University, Nanjing, in 2007. From June 2007 to October 2009, he was a Research Fellow with the Adastral Park Research Campus, University College London, London, U.K. He is currently with the faculty of the National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University. His research interests include space-time wireless communications, random matrix theory, and information theory. Dr. Jin serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions onWireless Communications, the IEEE Communications Letters, and IET Communications. He and his coauthors received the 2010 Young Author Best Paper Award by the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the 2011 IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award in the field of communication theory.

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Qiao, D., Yang, X., Tan, W. et al. Low-Cost Massive MIMO: Pilot Length and ADC Resolution. J. Commun. Inf. Netw. 3, 23–36 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41650-018-0020-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41650-018-0020-7

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