Performance Evaluation of VBLAST and Linear Receivers for mmWave MIMO Systems with Ray-Tracing Channel Models

Abstract

In this paper, the performance of a millimeter wave (mmWave) Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) system is investigated using low complexity receivers. The receivers include linear Maximum Ratio Combiner (MRC), linear Zero Forcing (ZF) receiver, or linear Minimum Mean-Square Error (MMSE) receiver, in addition to ZF Vertical Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (ZF-VBLAST). A MIMO channel model based on a ray-tracing approach and the uniform theory of diffraction has been used. The effect of increasing the number of rays used in the channel model is investigated on the performance of all receivers. For all the scenarios, it has been found out that the ZF-VBLAST structure provides the best symbol-error-rate performance followed by the linear MMSE, then the ZF receiver, and finally the MRC receiver. The trade-off paid for achieving better performance is the increased receiver complexity. The system’s performance is compared under a conventional statistical channel model and a ray-based channel model for a fifth-generation (5G) mobile radio system. It is noted that these models do not accurately characterize the specific environment, hence resulting in an optimistic estimate of the system performance. Finally, the ray-tracing channel model is modified to account for the impact of the presence of trees within the environment. The results show that the performance degradation due to the presence of trees is between 2 to 5 dB for ZF and MMSE receivers, respectively.