Downlink Massive MIMO Systems: Achievable Sum Rates and Energy Efficiency Perspective for Future 5G Systems

Abstract

To meet up with the ever increasing subscribers' demand for higher data rates and mobile data traffic growth in the telecommunication industry, the fifth generation (5G) systems is being considered for the next future cellular communication standards. The two principal design requirements being aimed at in 5G are robust data transmission rates in Gigabits and low power consumption systems. Massive multiple input multiple output (M-MIMO) technology is an evolving smart antenna technology which has some key promising potentials to boost 5G networks in meeting the aforementioned requirements. However, there is an emergent concern that increased number of antenna arrays in M-MIMO system could induce high power consumption and poor energy efficiency when deployed at the base stations (BSs). Also, inter-cellular interference which occurs as a result of pilot contamination, fast fading and uncorrelated noise effects in the radio channels are other open issues in M-MIMO system. This work investigates and compare the achievable sum rates and energy efficiency of a downlink single cell M-MIMO systems utilizing linear and nonlinear precoding schemes. First, we have shown how the increasing signal-to-noise ratio and M-antennas impact the achievable sum rates. Furthermore, the energy saving potentials of M-MIMO systems in macro, micro and pico cellular environments when linear and nonlinear precoding schemes are utilized at the BS have been demonstrated. Particularly, by means of power fairness index, the tradeoff among the energy efficiency, sum rate and the system users have also been presented and discussed. Results show that substantial energy efficiency improvements can be achieved in micro and pico cellular environments of downlink M-MIMO systems when non-linear successive interference cancellation precoding is applied compared to linear precoding schemes.