Performance Limits of Energy Detection Systems with Massive Receiver Arrays

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the theoretical performance bounds of energy detection in massive antenna arrays for millimeter wave systems, providing insights into how antenna count and SNR influence information rate and modulation choices.

Contribution

It introduces tight bounds on the information rate of energy detection with PAM in large arrays, under realistic fading conditions, and offers heuristics for adaptive modulation design.

Findings

Bounds are tight in low and high SNR regimes.

Increasing antennas improves achievable information rate.

Heuristics guide optimal modulation cardinality based on SNR and antenna number.

Abstract

Energy detection (ED) is an attractive technique for symbol detection at receivers equipped with a large number of antennas, for example in millimeter wave communication systems. This paper investigates the performance bounds of ED with pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) in large antenna arrays under single stream transmission and fast fading assumptions. The analysis leverages information-theoretic tools and semi-numerical approach to provide bounds on the information rate, which are shown to be tight in the low and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes, respectively. For a fixed constellation size, the impact of the number of antennas and SNR on the achievable information rate is investigated. Based on the results, heuristics are provided for the choice of the cardinality of the adaptive modulation scheme as a function of the SNR and the number of antennas.