Impact of imperfect channel estimation and antenna correlation on quantised massive multiple‐input multiple‐output systems

Abstract

This study examines the uplink performance of large-constellation multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output systems with low-resolution analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) in the presence of channel correlation and imperfect channel state information (CSI). The base station (BS) employs a large number of antennas for multiplexing and demultiplexing co-channel users with each antenna element having a dedicated radio frequency chain and two low-resolution ADCs. While such ADCs cause data loss due to coarse quantisation, the large number of antennas can be exploited not only to alleviate such a problem but also to make it possible to utilise large-constellation modulation schemes. The results provide an insight into the trade-off between various performance metrics and the number of quantisation bits under a wide range of realistic conditions. It will be shown that 1-bit quantisation provides sufficient resolution with 100 BS antennas to communicate with ten user equipments using quadrature phase shift keying, but the number of quantisation bits must be increased for larger constellations particularly to overcome CSI mismatch and channel correlation. The results also consider the trade-off between average mutual information and power consumption of the low-resolution ADCs. It will be shown that 16-quantum amplitude modulation with 2-bit quantisation may provide a good compromise between energy efficiency and average mutual information.