Massive MIMO Unlicensed for High-Performance Indoor Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces mMIMO-U, a high-capacity indoor wireless solution that enhances spectrum reuse and data rates by integrating null steering capabilities into massive MIMO systems, significantly outperforming traditional setups.

Contribution

The paper presents mMIMO-U, a novel extension of massive MIMO that enables precise null placement towards coexisting nodes, improving spectrum efficiency in unlicensed indoor networks.

Findings

mMIMO-U increases channel access opportunities.

Achieves four-fold throughput gains over mMIMO.

Achieves seven-fold throughput gains over single-antenna Wi-Fi.

Abstract

We propose massive MIMO unlicensed (mMIMO-U) as a high-capacity solution for future indoor wireless networks operating in the unlicensed spectrum. Building upon massive MIMO (mMIMO), mMIMO-U incorporates additional key features, such as the capability of placing accurate radiation nulls towards coexisting nodes during the channel access and data transmission phases. We demonstrate the spectrum reuse and data rate improvements attained by mMIMO-U by comparing three practical deployments: single-antenna Wi-Fi, where an indoor operator deploys three single-antenna Wi-Fi access points (APs), and two other scenarios where the central AP is replaced by either a mMIMO AP or the proposed mMIMO-U AP. We show that upgrading the central AP with mMIMO-U provides increased channel access opportunities for all of them. Moreover, mMIMO-U achieves four-fold and seven-fold gains in median throughput when compared to traditional mMIMO and single-antenna setups, respectively.