Oversampled 1-Bit Quantized Wideband Systems: Is it Better to Spend Samples in Time or in Space?

In wideband large-scale antenna systems, the received signal at individual antennas can correspond to different transmit symbols due to the high bandwidth and large antenna array dimensions. This effect is known as the spatial wideband effect. In this work we seek to answer the question if spatial oversampling, i.e., employing multiple receive antennas, or temporal oversampling for systems employing 1-bit quantization at the receiver yields a better performance under a line-of-sight channel model. A performance comparison utilizing maximum a posteriori symbol detection reveals a nearly identical performance. Hence, we propose to consider temporal oversampling as an alternative to spatial oversampling, as it allows to further reduce the hardware complexity beyond the already widely researched approach of decreasing the resolution of the analog-to-digital converter.