Massive MIMO with Dense Arrays and 1-bit Data Converters

TL;DR

This paper analyzes massive MIMO systems with densely spaced antennas and 1-bit converters, deriving achievable rates and proposing dithering to mitigate quantization effects, showing near-ideal performance at high densities.

Contribution

It provides closed-form rate expressions for dense-array massive MIMO with 1-bit ADCs/DACs, incorporating mutual coupling and introducing non-radiating dithering for improved performance.

Findings

Performance approaches ideal at high antenna density

Dithering reduces quantization error correlations

Closed-form achievable rate expressions derived

Abstract

We consider wireless communication systems with compact planar arrays having densely spaced antenna elements in conjunction with one-bit analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters (ADCs/DACs). We provide closed-form expressions for the achievable rates with simple linear processing techniques for the uplink as well as the downlink scenarios while taking into account the effects of antenna mutual coupling. In the downlink case, we introduce the concept of non-radiating dithering to combat correlations of the quantization errors. Under higher antenna element density, we show that the performance of the quantized system can be made close to the ideal performance regardless of the operating signal-to-noise ratio.