LOS Throughput Measurements in Real-Time with a 128-Antenna Massive MIMO Testbed

Abstract

This paper presents initial results for a novel 128-antenna massive Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) testbed developed through Bristol Is Open in collaboration with National Instruments and Lund University. We believe that the results presented here validate the adoption of massive MIMO as a key enabling technology for 5G and pave the way for further pragmatic research by the massive MIMO community. The testbed operates in real-time with a Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-like PHY in Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode and supports up to 12 spatial streams, providing an excellent basis for comparison with existing standards and complimentary testbeds. Through line-of-sight (LOS) measurements at 3.51 GHz in an indoor atrium environment with 12 user clients, an uncoded system sum-rate of 1.59 Gbps was achieved in real-time using a single 20 MHz LTE band, equating to 79.4 bits/s/Hz. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the highest spectral efficiency achieved for any wireless system to date.

Massive antenna array for space-time channel sounding

“…According to [1][2], the number of antennas varies from 32 to 128. In spatial modulation, the number of antennas is also important because it represents the spatial state number of the modulation.…”

“…This is especially important in the context of advanced transmission schemes, such as massive MIMO or spatial modulation. System performance can be investigated using various massive MIMO testbeds, most of which are recapped in the first tables of [1] and [2]. The number of antennas ranges from 32 to 128.…”

Effective Channel Hardening in an Indoor Multiband Scenario

“…Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems are envisioned as a key feature of the next generation of communication systems which provide large sum capacity as well as spectral and energy efficiency, while simultaneously serving multiple users. Some of the theoretical properties [2,12,18] have been empirically shown through recent measurement campaigns [9,10,14]. In these analyses, keeping the number of users 10 folds less than number of base station (BS) antennas is considered good practice.…”

Novel 3-D Non-Stationary Wideband Models for Massive MIMO Channels

“…I N RECENT years, massive multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) technology has been proposed as a key enabler for the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems due to its promising capabilities to efficiently cope with an increasing number of devices and high data traffic demand [1]- [3]. In spite of the great challenges the use of a large number of antennas entails, recent research demonstrated that most benefits claimed from the early theoretical studies on massive MIMO, e.g., increase of capacity and efficiency, are achievable in realistic conditions [4]- [6].…”