A Cluster-Based Channel Model for Massive MIMO Communications in Indoor Hotspot Scenarios

Characterization and modeling of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel has been one of the research hotspots in the field of wireless communications. One important feature of the massive MIMO channel is the spatial non-stationarity. To statistically model the spatial non-stationary massive MIMO channels, a cluster-based channel model is proposed in this paper. The model incorporates both inter- and intra-cluster properties and the cluster evolution over the large-scale array. A hybrid data processing scheme is applied to extract the multipath components (MPCs) and clustering the MPCs over a large-scale antenna array. The global angular spread, cluster angular spread, and cluster delay spread are modeled with log-normal distributions. Observed cluster length and MPC length within clusters, which are introduced to describe the cluster existence over the array and MPCs existence within the cluster, respectively, are statistically modeled with the exponential distributions. Moreover, both the cluster and MPC arrival intervals, which are used, respectively, to describe the cluster occurrence position on the array and MPC occurrence position within the cluster, can be statistically modeled with the uniform distributions. Finally, the model implementation is validated by comparing with the different channel performance metrics between measurements and simulations.