A Frequency-Domain Opportunistic Approach for Spectral-Efficient Cell-Free Massive MIMO

TL;DR

This paper introduces a frequency-domain opportunistic method for wideband cell-free massive MIMO that enhances spectral efficiency by selectively activating access points based on user proximity and channel conditions, improving overall network performance.

Contribution

It proposes a novel frequency-domain opportunistic approach leveraging OFDM and the near-far effect to activate nearby access points, reducing interference and power wastage in wideband CFmMIMO systems.

Findings

Significant spectral efficiency gains over benchmark methods

Reduced inter-user interference through AP activation strategy

Enhanced downlink performance with fewer active APs

Abstract

Constrained by weak signal strength and significant inter-cell interference, users located at the cell edge in a cellular network suffer from inferior service quality. Recently, cell-free massive MIMO (CFmMIMO) has gained considerable attention due to its capability to offer uniform quality of service, alleviating the cell-edge problem. In contrast to previous studies focused on narrow-band CFmMIMO systems, this paper studies wideband CFmMIMO communications against channel frequency selectivity. By exploiting the frequency-domain flexibility offered by orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), and leveraging a particular spatial characteristic in the cell-free structure -- namely, the near-far effect among distributed access points (APs) -- we propose an opportunistic approach to boost spectral efficiency. The core concept lies in opportunistically activating nearby APs for certain users across their assigned OFDM subcarriers while deactivating distant APs to prevent power wastage and lower inter-user interference. Furthermore, this approach enables the use of downlink pilots by reducing the number of active APs per subcarrier to a small subset, thereby substantially improving downlink performance through coherent detection at the user receiver. Verified by numerical results, our proposed approach demonstrates considerable performance improvement compared to the two benchmark approaches.