Hybrid beamforming in uplink massive MIMO systems in the presence of blockers

Paper in proceedings, 2017

Hybrid beamforming (HBF) is a potential solution to reduce the baseband hardware cost in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems that has drawn considerable attention recently. In this paper, we consider the uplink of a multiuser massive MIMO system in the presence of blockers. Such blockers, which arise from, for example, users served by other non-cooperative base stations (BSs), can limit the system performance if not handled properly. We propose a HBF scheme that can remove the impact of blockers, while preserving signals from intended users. Specifically, in our two-step receive beamforming scheme, the analog beamformer (ABF) is designed based on channel covariance matrices to minimize the powers of blockers, while the digital beamformer (DBF) deals with inter-user interference. We propose an iterative algorithm that efficiently gives a good sub-optimal solution to the NP-hard problem in the ABF design. Moreover, we consider a more complete BS architecture by incorporating automatic gain control (AGC) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC). As we show in the simulations, for a system with full-precision ADCs, our scheme approaches the sum rate of an ideal fully-digital system. Interestingly, for a system with low-resolution ADCs, our HBF scheme can even outperform a fully-digital system.