Distributed Expectation Propagation Detection for Cell-Free Massive MIMO

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel distributed expectation propagation detector for cell-free massive MIMO, combining nonlinear and linear modules to improve detection accuracy and outperform existing methods.

Contribution

It proposes a new distributed EP detection algorithm with an analytical performance framework for cell-free massive MIMO networks.

Findings

Outperforms existing distributed detectors in bit-error-rate

Provides an analytical characterization of asymptotic performance

Demonstrates effectiveness through simulation results

Abstract

In cell-free massive MIMO networks, an efficient distributed detection algorithm is of significant importance. In this paper, we propose a distributed expectation propagation (EP) detector for cell-free massive MIMO. The detector is composed of two modules, a nonlinear module at the central processing unit (CPU) and a linear module at the access point (AP). The turbo principle in iterative decoding is utilized to compute and pass the extrinsic information between modules. An analytical framework is then provided to characterize the asymptotic performance of the proposed EP detector with a large number of antennas. Simulation results will show that the proposed method outperforms the distributed detectors in terms of bit-error-rate.