Sunday, 25 July 2021

5G NR: Massive MIMO in 5G NR

                                                   
Massive MIMO - Why Massive MIMO?

We use very high frequency (mm Wave) signal in 5G. High frequency mean that the size of single antenna will be very small and the aperture (the area for receiving energy) will be very small. To overcome this small aperture on receiver side at high frequency, we need to use a large number of transmission antenna.
It would be the main reason to adopt the Massive MIMO technology, we can enjoy some other advantages coming from using a large array antenna.

It would be the main reason to adopt the Massive MIMO technology, we can enjoy some other advantages coming from using a large array antenna.




The received power is decreased in proportion to the square of the distance from the transmission antenna. For example, if the distance gets two times farther away, the received power gets decreased by 4 times.
                           


Here we can see there is no any parameter about frequency or the gain of the receiver’s antenna. But we know in real scenario the received signal power IS affected by the frequency (wave length) and receiver antenna gain.
If we improve the mathematical model to include the frequency (wave length) and receiver antenna gain, the model can be described as shown below.
As per below equation, the received power is in proportion to the square of the wavelength.
As Example, if we assume the antenna gain does not changes, the frequency gets increased by 2 times (this mean that the wavelength gets shorten by 2 times), the received power gets decreased by 4 times.
                                  



As Example, if we use 3 GHz frequency in current communication and we will use 30 GHz frequency in 5G, the wavelength in 30 GHz is 10 times shorter than the wavelength of 3 GHz. It means the received power at 30 GHz will be 100 times lower than the received power at 3 GHz.
In reality, the situation gets even more complicated because not only the receiver antenna gain but also transmission antenna gain plays role as well. If we add the transmission antenna gain into the equation, it would become as shown below.
                                   


Now question is 'how we can make Prx larger?

·        Massive MIMO can increase the capacity 10 times or more and simultaneously, improve the radiated energy-efficiency in the order of 100 times.
·        Massive MIMO simplifies the multiple-access layer
·        Massive MIMO enables a significant reduction of latency on the air interface (due to robustness against fading)
·        If we assume that we are using a fixed antenna size relative to the wavelength (e.g, size of 1/4 wavelength, 1/2 wavelength etc), as the carrier frequency goes higher, the path loss increases.
·        This means the absolute physical size of the antenna gets smaller as carrier frequency goes higher. It means we can put more antenna in the same area in higher carrier frequencies. Based on this facts, we may compensate the high path loss in high carrier frequencies by putting more antenna without increasing the total size of the antenna array.


Simple Formula for Network Throughput [bit/s/km2]:

Throughput (bit/s/km2/) =

Cell density (Cell/km2) * Available spectrum (Hz) * Spectral efficiency (bit/s/Hz/Cell)

Cell density => Cell density refers to the number of cells per unit volume. Expensive to deploy more base stations
Available spectrum=> Plenty of mm-wave spectrum, but only for short-range scenarios
Spectral efficiency=> Can we improve it? Improve technology, upgrade base stations
Maximum amount of data can be transmitted with the fewest transmission error
In a cellular telephone network, spectrum efficiency equates to the maximum number of users per cell that can be provided while maintaining an acceptable quality of service (QoS).

There is one thing that is automatically acquired by Massive MIMO. It is the fact that most of energy transmitted from the antenna array focus on very narrow area. It means the beam width get narrower as you use more antenna. Following plot would give you an example for the effect of beam width narrowing with the increased number of antenna.



More Antennas → More Directivity







You would notice how narrower the beam width become as the number of antenna in the array get larger.

This effect would cause both advantage and disadvantage at the sometime. Advantage would be that there will be less interference between beams for different users since each of the beam would be focused in very small area and the disadvantage would be that you have to implement very sophisticated algorithm to find exact location of the user and directing the beam to the user with high accuracy.


Massive MIMO: Taking Multi-User MIMO to the Next Level


Main Characteristics
·       Many BS antennas; e.g., M=200 antennas, K=40 single-antenna users
·       Many more antennas than users: M>K
·       Very directive signals
·       Little interference leakage
Spectral efficiency grows with number of users.





http://www.commsys.isy.liu.se/~ebjornson/bjornson_popularscience_2017.pdf

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