Large-scale MU-MIMO: It Is Necessary to Deploy Extra Antennas at Base Station

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in large-scale MU-MIMO systems, deploying extra antennas at the base station is essential for maximizing sum rate, with optimal user numbers and significant improvements achievable by adding antennas.

Contribution

It proves the necessity of excess antennas at the BS for optimal sum rate and derives the optimal number of users for given antennas, supported by asymptotic analysis and simulations.

Findings

Extra antennas at the BS are necessary for maximum sum rate.

Optimal number of users depends on the ratio of antennas at BS and users.

Adding a few antennas can significantly improve sum rate.

Abstract

In this paper, the large-scale MU-MIMO system is considered where a base station (BS) with extremely large number of antennas (N) serves relatively less number of users (K). In order to achieve largest sum rate, it is proven that the amount of users must be limited such that the number of antennas at the BS is preponderant over that of the antennas at all the users. In other words, the antennas at the BS should be excess. The extra antennas at the BS are no longer just an optional approach to enhance the system performance but the prerequisite to the largest sum rate. Based on this factor, for a fixed N, the optimal K that maximizes the sum rate is further obtained. Additionally, it is also pointed out that the sum rate can be substantially improved by only adding a few antennas at the BS when the system is N=KM with M denoting the antennas at each user. The derivations are under the assumption of N and M going to infinity, and being implemented on different precoders. Numerical simulations verify the tightness and accuracy of our asymptotic results even for small N and M.