On the performance of distortion-aware linear receivers in uplink massive MIMO systems

Paper in proceeding, 2019

We consider the uplink of a single-cell multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system in presence of nonlinear distortion at the users and the base station. Assuming orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission, we leverage Bussgang's theorem to derive an equivalent linear model and we formulate a distortion-aware linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE)-based receiver. The accuracy of the proposed equivalent linear model is verified via numerical experiments. Furthermore, our results reveal that the distortion-aware LMMSE receiver can compensate in part for the performance loss due to nonlinear distortion over MU-MIMO-OFDM uplink system.