The Distributed MIMO Scenario: Can Ideal ADCs Be Replaced by Low-Resolution ADCs?

This letter considers the architecture of a distributed antenna system, which is made up of a massive number of single-antenna remote radio heads (RRHs), some with full-resolution but others with low-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC) receivers. This architecture is greatly motivated by its high energy efficiency and low-cost implementation. We derive the worst-case uplink spectral efficiency (SE) of the system assuming a frequency-flat channel and maximum-ratio combining, and reveal that the SE increases as the number of quantization bits for the low-resolution ADCs increases, and the SE converges as the number of RRHs with low-resolution ADCs grows. Our results furthermore demonstrate that a great improvement can be obtained by adding a majority of RRHs with low-resolution ADC receivers, if sufficient quantization precision and an acceptable proportion of high-to-low resolution RRHs are used.