Low Cost and High Efficiency Hybrid Architecture Massive MIMO Systems Based on DFT Processing

Abstract

Low cost and high efficiency, defined as energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE), have raised more and more attention in the fifth generation (5G) communication systems due to steadily rising hardware cost, energy consumption, and mobile traffic. This paper studies the hybrid architecture of multiuser massive MIMO systems, where the digital domain utilizes the zero-forcing (ZF) precoding scheme and the analog domain uses discrete Fourier transform (DFT) processing that significantly reduces hardware cost and energy consumption. We derive analytical expressions on the total achievable SE and EE, as well as offering insight into some engineering parameters in the system performance. Our aim is to achieve low cost and high efficiency massive MIMO system, with constraints on the overall transmit power, the number of users, and the number of radio frequency (RF) chains. Results exhibit that the total achievable SE of the hybrid architectures with DFT precessing is inferior to the full digital architectures and hybrid architectures with the ideal phase shifters, but the performance attenuation can be compensated by providing the more input SNR and higher number of RF chains. Moreover, we find that the total achievable EE of hybrid architectures with DFT precessing outperforms other massive MIMO architectures that include a full digital implementation, ideal phase shifters, and a switched network.