Cell-Free Massive MIMO: Uniformly Great Service For Everyone
Hien Quoc Ngo, Alexei Ashikhmin, Hong Yang, Erik G. Larsson, and, Thomas L. Marzetta

TL;DR
This paper analyzes Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems, demonstrating they provide uniformly high-quality service, significantly outperform small-cell networks in throughput, and are more robust to shadow fading, through derived rate expressions and optimal power control.
Contribution
It derives a closed-form achievable rate expression and proposes an optimal max-min power control scheme for Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems, enhancing fairness and performance.
Findings
20-fold increase in 95%-likely per-user throughput compared to small-cell networks
More concentrated throughput distribution around the median
Greater robustness to shadow fading correlation
Abstract
We consider the downlink of Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems, where a very large number of distributed access points (APs) simultaneously serve a much smaller number of users. Each AP uses local channel estimates obtained from received uplink pilots and applies conjugate beamforming to transmit data to the users. We derive a closed-form expression for the achievable rate. This expression enables us to design an optimal max-min power control scheme that gives equal quality of service to all users. We further compare the performance of the Cell-Free Massive MIMO system to that of a conventional small-cell network and show that the throughput of the Cell-Free system is much more concentrated around its median compared to that of the small-cell system. The Cell-Free Massive MIMO system can provide an almost fold increase in 95%-likely per-user throughput, compared with the small-cell…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced MIMO Systems Optimization · Cooperative Communication and Network Coding · Advanced Wireless Network Optimization
