Massive MIMO Technology

The escalating tele-traffic growth imposed by the proliferation of smart-phones and tablet computers outstrips the capacity increase of wireless communications networks. Furthermore, it results in substantially increased carbon dioxide emissions. As a powerful countermeasure, in the case of full-rank channel matrices, MIMO techniques are potentially capable of linearly increasing the capacity or decreasing the transmit power upon commensurately increasing the number of antennas. Hence, the concept of massive MIMO systems has attracted substantial research attention and been regarded as a promising technique for next-generation wireless communications networks. Therefore, this chapter surveys the state-of-the-art of massive MIMO systems. Firstly, some typical application scenarios are classified and analyzed. Then, key techniques of both the physical layer and network layer are also detailed. Finally, we conclude this chapter.