FACULTY OF TELECOMMUNICATION AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF MASSIVE MIMO IN 5G NETWORK

BY:
MOHAMMED FAISAL HAMID
OMER MOHAMED AHMED

SUPERVISOR:
DR.MAYADA S.A. MUSTAFA

JULY 2022

1
 Chapter One
Introduction

1.1. Overview
As technologies are becoming more advanced, it can be taken for granted that more
wireless throughput is always going to be needed. It is expected that, within a few years,
millions of users will want to use mobile multimedia applications such as online gaming, e-
healthcare, streaming videos and communicating through holographic videos. Thus, hundreds
of megabits per second will be essential for every user.

Availability of spectrum which will never increase, fundamentals of information

theory and the electromagnetic laws of propagation are all aspects that impact the amount of
information that can be transferred wirelessly. Hence, the performance of wireless networks
is always limited at the physical layer. Improving the efficiency of wireless networks is
typically done by :

1) utilizing the free or underutilized areas of the spectrum

2) increasing the density of access points

3) improving the spectral efficiency by increasing the number of bits that can be
carried in each Hertz.

Using MIMO technology is the only way to substantially improved channel capacity.
The original form of this technology is Point to point MIMO which was theoretically
developed later to Multi-user MIMO and recently Massive MIMO. It is well known that, in
classical MIMO, multiple antennas at both ends exploit wireless channel diversity to provide
more reliable high-speed connections. Massive MIMO (also known as Large-Scale Antenna
Systems, Very Large MIMO, Hyper MIMO, and Full-Dimension MIMO) makes a bold
development from current practice using a very large number of service antennas (e.g.,
hundreds or thousands) that are operated fully coherently and adaptively shows the speed
improvement of wireless networks over the years starting from single-input-single-output
(SISO) systems, single user (SU) and multiple users (MU) MIMO networks. MU-MIMO
systems already provide significant advantages over earlier systems. Massive MIMO aims to
further enhance this (to 10 Gbps and more) using hundreds of antennas exploiting advances

2
in parallel digital signal processing and high-speed electronics showing the speed
improvement of wireless networks over the years starting from single-input-single-output
(SISO) systems.

Due to the advantages of MIMO technology, 5G massive MIMO overcome the

problem of the capacity in 4G sector antenna-based cell network. Figure 1.1 illustrates the
difference between sector and MIMO antenna-based wireless network.

Figure 1. 1 the difference between sector and MIMO antenna-based wireless network

Some of the benefits of Massive MIMO for 5G Networks are

 Spectral Efficiency: Massive MIMO provides higher spectral efficiency by allowing
its antenna array to focus narrow beams towards a user. Spectral efficiency more than
ten times better than the current MIMO system used for 4G/LTE can be achieved.
 Energy Efficiency: As antenna array is focused in a small specific section, it requires
less radiated power and reduces the energy requirement in massive MIMO systems.
 High Data Rate: The array gain and spatial multiplexing provided by massive MIMO
increases the data rate and capacity of wireless systems.
 User Tracking: Since massive MIMO uses narrow signal beams towards the user;
user tracking becomes more reliable and accurate.
 Low Power Consumption: Massive MIMO is built with ultra-lower power linear
amplifiers, which eliminates the use of bulky electronic equipment in the system. This
power consumption can be considerably reduced.
 Less Fading: A Large number of the antenna at the receiver makes massive MIMO
resilient against fading [1].
 Low Latency: Massive MIMO reduces the latency on the air interface [2].

3
  Robustness: Massive MIMO systems are robust against unintended interference and
internal Jamming. Also, these systems are robust to one or a few antenna failures due
to large antennas [3].
 Reliability: A large number of antennas in massive MIMO provides more diversity
gain, which increases the link reliability [4,5].
 Enhanced Security: Massive MIMO provides more physical security due to the
orthogonal mobile station channels and narrow beams [6].
 Low Complex Linear Processing: More number of base station antenna makes the
simple signal detectors and precoders optimal for the system.

1.2. Problem statement

This thesis is investigating the performance of massive MIMO for better Spectral
Efficiency. Maintaining an ideal channel conditions when a large number of antennas are
located in tight space is a challenge. However, Previous studies have ignore that issue and
just assume channel condition is perfect. Hence, a channel model that takes into account the
angle spread, antenna spacing, and angle of arrival is considered to explore the capacity of
Massive MIMO systems.

1.3. Objective

 to investigates the performance of massive MIMO that serving too many users
simultaneously in the same geographical area.
 To examine the effect of the cell size, the number of antennas in the BS, and the
spacing between the antennas on the spectral efficiency of massive MIMO

 .To inspect the effect of the imperfect channel knowledge and user allocation on UL
channel estimation where the channel covariance matrix is necessary for the LMMSE
estimator. MATLAB is used to validate the performance.

1.4. Project outline

The objective of this thesis is to present the basic theory of massive MIMO and to examine
several typical applications of massive MIMO. In Chap. 1, we elaborate on the significance
of massive MIMO for 5G or future communications following a brief introduction to the
techniques of Massive MIMO. In chap. 2, we discuss the development of MIMO into
Massive MIMO and how the spectral efficiency can be improved using these technologies. In

4
chap. 3 and we will discuss the efficiency of massive MIMO and its mathematical
formulation with the MATLAB simulation results seeking to prove that the increase in the
number of antennas in a single Base Station would improve the spectral efficiency of the
system by multiple times without the increase in the consumption of spatial resources. In
chapter 4, we will preview the results of the simulation done and discuss the outputs. In
chapter 5 we will end it with the conclusion and some recommendation for the future work
and then the references & the appendixes will be shown.

5
 Chapter Two
Background

2.1. Introduction
Since these developments in spatial multiplexing and spatial diversity in the late
1990s, a huge amount of research has been done. The emerging MIMO techniques from this
research using the means of spatial multiplexing and spatial diversity led to an increase the
number of wireless standards used commercially.Most of commercial communications
standards now include MIMO technology after it was included in the WiMAX standard in
2005. Figure 2.1 is summary of the history of multi-antenna technology.

Figure 2.1 Summary of the history of multi-antenna technology

Some of the most important historical events in the use of multi antenna technology
over the past one hundred years are summarized in Figure 2.1. This timeline along with the
previous discussion proves that MIMO is the most recent form of exploiting the multi-
antenna technology.

6
 Figure 2.2 (a) uplink

Figure 2.2 (b) downlink

As shown in Figure 2.2, each terminal with multiple antennas is served with a BS
equipped with an array of antennas. The combination of frequency/time division multiplexing
is used to serve different users in distinct time/frequency blocks. Therefore, throughput is
increased without using more bandwidth or pumping higher power. The channel capacity (in
b/s/Hz) with the existence of additive white Gaussian noise at the receiver according to
Shannon theory is [7]:

7
 Ul
|
C =log 2 ⁡ I M +
ρUl
K
GG
H
| (2.1)

|
C dl =log 2 ⁡ I K +
ρ dl H
M
G G| (2.2)

Where G is frequency response of the channel between the BS and the terminal that is
denoted by an M*K dimensional matrix. ρdl and ρUl are the DL and the UL SNRs that vary in
proportion to the total radiated power. M & K are the number of BS and UE antennas
respectively. While channel knowledge is required at the receiver to satisfy the capacity in
2.1, transmitter is not required to have any knowledge about the channel. For high SNRs, Cdl
and Cul scale logarithmically with the SNR and linearly with min (M, K) in rich scattering
propagation environments. Therefore, capacity of the link can be improved by simultaneous
use of a large number of antennas at the transmitter and the receiver.

There are many issues preventing Point to Point MIMO of being scalable beyond
eight antennas. First, eight streams of data may not always be supported by the propagation
environment especially under line-of-sight conditions. The time needed for training is
proportional to the number of antennas. Third, complicated terminals require independent
electronics for every antenna. Fourth, the signal processing that can achieve close to Shannon
limit performance is very complicated. Finally, users who are around the cell edge where
SNR is usually low as a result of the high path loss would struggle because of the slow
improvement with min (M, K).

1.5. Multiuser MIMO

The MU-MIMO system shown in Figure 2.3 where multi-antenna BS serves multiple
UE is more practical than point to point MIMO. The main principle of multiuser MIMO is
that each BS with multiple antennas can use the same frequency-time resources to serve a
multiplicity of single antenna terminals that share the multiplexing gain [48]. One can
intuitively understand the multiuser MIMO scenario as if the K-antennas terminal in the
point-to-point MIMO was broken up into multiple autonomous terminals. Cooperation
between the antennas of the UE is possible in the case of the point-to-point MIMO, however
UEs in MU-MIMO cannot communicate with each other. Although the poor-quality channels
can sometimes severely influence the throughput achieved by individual users, the break up
actually improves the sum throughput of the system. Hence, the impact of the propagation

8
environment on MU-MIMO system is less than the case of point-to-point MIMO due to the
multi-user diversity. As a result, many communication standards such as 802.16 (WiMAX),
802.11 (WIFI) and LTE have included MU-MIMO. The BS usually is equipped with only
few numbers of antennas (i.e., 10 antennas or less) for most MIMO application. Thus, only
modest improvement is brought to the spectral efficacy using the MIMO technology so far.

Figure 2.3 Multiuser MIMO

Figure 1.3 Multiuser MIMO

The performance of MU-MIMO system if the terminals in Figure 2.3 with a single
antenna each, K are served by the BS is better than the case of point-to-point MIMO.
Knowing that G is the M*K matrix that represent the frequency response between the BS
antennas and the K, the sum capacities of the UL and DL are given by

9
 C Ul=log 2 ⁡|I M + ρ Ul G GH| (2.3)

C =max log 2 ⁡|I M + ρdl G D v G |

dl H

v k ≥0
(2.4)

T
Where v=[ v 1 , … , v K ] , ρdl is the DL SNR, and ρUl is the UL SNR for every terminal.
The total UL transmit power of multiuser MIMO is greater than the transmit power of the
point-to-point MIMO by a factor of K. Computing the capacity of the DL in 2.4 depends on
solving a convex optimization problem. CSI knowledge is important for both 2.3 and 2.4. On
the UL only the BS is required to know the channel while every terminal must be separately
informed about their permissible transmit rate. On the DL, however, CSI knowledge is
required in the BS and the terminals. The most import thing to note is that cooperation
between UE antennas is possible in the point-to-point case, whereas terminals cannot
cooperate in the multiuser case. However, the lack of cooperation between the terminals in
the multi user system does not affect the UL sum capacity when comparing 2.1 and 2.3.
Moreover, the DL capacity 2.4 can exceed the DL capacity in 2.2 of point-to-point MIMO.

There are two reasons that make multiuser MIMO better than Point to Point MIMO.
First, multiuser MIMO is less sensitive to the propagation environment. It shows a good
performance even when line of sight conditions is present. Second, single antennas terminals
can be sufficient. However, Multiuser MIMO cannot be scalable for two reasons. First, the
complexity of dirty paper coding and decoding grows exponentially. Second, the time needed
for training to acquire the channel state information (CSI) increases in proportion with the
number of users and the BS antennas.

1.6. Massive MIMO

is a newest form of the MIMO technology that has yet to be employed in the next
generation of wireless systems due to its many advantages that will enhance the wireless
communications. The name of this technology refers to the concept of equipping the BS with
a very large number of antennas. It is going to be an important solution to handle the
exponential growth in data traffic. When this technology was introduced, it was presented as
a modified and scalable version of multiuser MIMO. Simple linear processing is sufficient for
massive MIMO to add orders of magnitude of improvement to energy and spectral efficiency.

Considering its capacities in equations 2.3 and 2.4 based on the Shannon theory,
increasing M in multiuser MIMO result in logarithmically growing throughputs. The total

10
time spent for training, however, increases linearly. Massive MIMO avoid this problem by
taking measures to ensure that operations do not approach Shannon limit, however achieving
a performance that overtake any typical multiuser MIMO system.

There are three main differences that distinguish between massive MIMO and
multiuser MIMO. First, knowledge of the channel is only required at the BS. Second, the
number of antennas M at the BS is usually much larger than the number of users K. Third,
both the DL and the UL use simple linear signal processing. Therefore, scaling up this
technology can be easily done when it comes to the number of antennas at the BS.

In massive MIMO, hundreds of terminals can be simultaneously served with a BS

equipped with hundreds of antennas over the same time/frequency resources

2.2. Spectral Efficiency

With spectral efficiency, we usually mean the sum spectral efficiency of the
transmissions in a cell of a cellular network. It is measured in bit/s/Hz. If you multiply it with
the bandwidth, you will get the cell throughput measured in bit/s. Since the bandwidth is a
scarce resource, particularly at the frequencies below 5 GHz that are suitable for network
coverage, it is highly desirable to improve the cell throughput by increasing the spectral
efficiency rather than increasing the bandwidth.

A great way to improve the spectral efficiency is to simultaneously serve many user
terminals in the cell, over the same bandwidth, by means of space division multiple access.
This is where Massive MIMO is needed. There is no doubt that this technology can improve
the spectral efficiency.

2.3. Channel Estimation

The BS needs CSI to detect the signals transmitted from the users in the uplink, and to
precode the signals in the downlink. This CSI is obtained through the uplink training. Each
user is assigned an orthogonal pilot sequence, and sends this pilot sequence to the BS. The
BS knows the pilot’s sequences transmitted from all users, and then estimates the channels
based the received pilot signals.

2.4. Benefits of Massive MIMO

The need for more reliable communications and the demand for wireless throughput
will always increase. Hence, new technologies in the future are required to simultaneously
serve many users with a very high throughput [8]. These requirements can by met with

11
massive MIMO. The capacity of the UL transmission under favourable propagation
conditions is (DL transmission follows the same argument):

C sum =log 2 det ( I K + p u M I K ) =K log 2 ( 1+ M pu ) (2.5)

Where M and K represent the array gain and multiplexing gain respectively. It is
obvious that large K and M result in a very high energy and spectral efficiency. Hence, by
increasing K and M , higher number of users can be served over the same frequency band
without the need the increase the transmit power of every terminal. Therefore, the throughput
of every user increases. Moreover, the transmit power can be reduced 3 dB by doubling the
number of antennas in the BS without compromising the quality of service.

Favourable propagation conditions and Optimal processing at the BS are necessary to

get the array and the multiplexing gain. These gains can also be achieved using linear
processing with massive MIMO instead of the usual low dimensional point to point MIMO
with very complicated processing schemes [9]. In fact, when the number of BS antennas is
increased to a very large number in massive MIMO, the channel becomes favourable because
of the low of large numbers. Therefore, linear processing is considered almost optimal for
massive MIMO. Therefore, array and multiplexing gains can be achieved using simple linear
processing. Also, the throughput can always be improved by increasing the number of the BS
antennas.

2.5. Challenges of Massive MIMO

Although massive MIMO have great advantages, many challenges still need to be
dealt with. The most important issues are listed below:

2.5.1. Unfavourable propagation

It is assumed that massive MIMO operates under favourable propagation conditions.
In practice, however, there are many circumstances that makes the propagation of the channel
favourable. For example, the propagation environment when the number of users is much
more than the number of scatters, or if the scatters between the BS and the channels of
different users are common. Disturbing the antennas of the BS over a large area is one
possible solution to this problem.

2.5.2. Pilot Contamination

Cellular networks in practice consist of a large number of cells. Due to the scarcity of
the frequency spectrum, frequency resources are shared between many cells. Thus, assigning
12
orthogonal pilots for all the users is difficult because of the restricted channel coherence
period. These orthogonal sequences are usually reused between the different cells. Hence, the
process of channel estimation in a certain cell can be affected with the pilot sequences
transmitted on the other cells. The system performance can be reduced by this phenomenon
known as “pilot contamination” [10].

2.5.3. The Need for New Designs and Standard

Deploying massive MIMO using the current standard such as LTE would be very
efficient. However, the maximum number of antennas at the BS allowed by the LTE standard
are only 8 antennas. Moreover, the CSI used by LTE are assumed rather than measured. For
example, one of the possibilities for the DL in LTE is to transmit the pilot signals from the
BS through many fixed beams. The strongest beam is then reported back to the BS to be used
for the DL transmission. Massive MIMO, on the other hand, exploit measured (estimated)
channel information. Thus, new standards are needed before massive MIMO is reduced to
practice.

13
References
[1] Nguyen M. Massive MIMO: A Survey of Benefits and Challenges. ICSES Trans. Comput. Hardw. Electr.
Eng. 2018;4:1–4.

[2] Hoydis J., Hosseini K., Brink S.T., Debbah M. Making smart use of excess antennas: Massive MIMO, small
cells, and TDD. Bell Labs Tech. J. 2013;18:5–21. doi: 10.1002/bltj.21602.

[3] Jungnickel V., Manolakis K., Zirwas W., Panzner B., Braun V., Lossow M., Sternad M., Apelfrojd R.,
Svensson T. The role of small cells, coordinated multipoint, and massive MIMO in 5G. IEEE Commun. Mag.
2014;52:44–51. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2014.6815892.

[4] Marzetta T.L. Noncooperative cellular wireless with unlimited numbers of base station antennas. IEEE
Trans. Wirel. Commun. 2010;9:3590–3600. doi: 10.1109/TWC.2010.092810.091092.

[5] Popovski P., Stefanović Č., Nielsen J.J., De Carvalho E., Angjelichinoski M., Trillingsgaard K.F., Bana A.S.
Wireless Access in Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) IEEE Trans. Commun.
2019;67:5783–5801. doi: 10.1109/TCOMM.2019.2914652.

[6] Hoydis J., Brink S.T., Debbah M. Massive MIMO in the/DL of cellular networks: How many antennas do
we need? IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 2013;31:160–171. doi: 10.1109/JSAC.2013.130205.

[7] A. Alshammari, S. Albdran, and M. A. Matin, “Channel Capacity of Next Generation Large Scale MIMO
Systems,” in SPIE, 2016.

[8] Y. Long, Z. Chen, and J. Fang, “Nonasymptotic Analysis of Capacity in Massive MIMO Systems,” IEEE
Wirel. Commun. Lett., vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 541–544, 2015.

[9] J. Liu, A. Eryilmaz, N. B. Shroff, and E. S. Bentley, “Understanding the impact of limited channel state
information on massive MIMO network performances,” Proc. 17th ACM Int. Symp. Mob. Ad Hoc Netw.
Comput. - MobiHoc ’16, vol. 8716, no. c, pp. 251–260, 2016.

[10] J. Jose, A. Ashikhmin, T. L. Marzetta, and S. Vishwanath, “Pilot contam- ination and precoding in multi-
cell TDD systems,” IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun., vol. 10, no. 8, p. 2640 2651, 2011.

14