Using a Drone Sounder to Measure Channels for Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a drone-based channel sounder for efficient, flexible, and low-cost measurement of propagation channels in cell-free massive MIMO systems, enabling rapid data collection across wide areas.

Contribution

It presents a novel UAV-based measurement method for CF-mMIMO channels, providing a practical solution for large-scale, real-world data collection and analysis.

Findings

Efficient data collection from thousands of locations within minutes

Sample measurement results at 3.5 GHz analyzing deployment strategies

Open source dataset for further research

Abstract

Measurements of the propagation channel form the basis of all realistic system performance evaluations, as foundation of statistical channel models or to verify ray tracing. This is also true for the analysis of cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (CF-mMIMO) systems in real-world environments. However, such experimental data are difficult to obtain, due to the complexity and expense of deploying tens or hundreds of channel sounder nodes across the wide area a CF-mMIMO system is expected to cover, especially when different configurations and number of antennas are to be explored. In this paper, we provide a novel method to measure channels for CF-mMIMO systems using a channel sounder based on a drone, also known as a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Such a method is efficient, flexible, simple, and low-cost, capturing channel data from thousands of different access point (AP) locations within minutes. In addition, we provide sample 3.5 GHz measurement results analyzing deployment strategies for APs and make the data open source, so they may be used for various other studies.