EVM Analysis of Distributed Massive MIMO with 1-Bit Radio-Over-Fiber Fronthaul
Journal article, 2024

We analyze the uplink performance of a distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architecture in which the remotely located access points (APs) are connected to a central processing unit via a fiber-optical fronthaul carrying a dithered and 1-bit quantized version of the received radio-frequency (RF) signal. The innovative feature of the proposed architecture is that no down-conversion is performed at the APs. This eliminates the need to equip the APs with local oscillators, which may be difficult to synchronize. Under the assumption that a constraint is imposed on the amount of data that can be exchanged across the fiber-optical fronthaul, we investigate the tradeoff between spatial oversampling, defined in terms of the total number of APs, and temporal oversampling, defined in terms of the oversampling factor selected at the central processing unit, to facilitate the recovery of the transmitted signal from 1-bit samples of the RF received signal. Using the so-called error-vector magnitude (EVM) as performance metric, we shed light on the optimal design of the dither signal, and quantify, for a given number of APs, the minimum fronthaul rate required for our proposed distributed massive MIMO architecture to outperform a standard co-located massive MIMO architecture in terms of EVM.

massive multiple-input multiple-output

Band-pass filters

Quantization (signal)

Uplink

Synchronization

Massive MIMO

1-bit analog-to-digital converters

RF signals

Central Processing Unit

orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing

nonsubtractive dithering

error vector magnitude

Bussgang’s theorem

Author

Anzhong Hu

Hangzhou Dianzi University

Lise Aabel

Ericsson

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Giuseppe Durisi

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Sven Jacobsson

Ericsson

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Mikael Coldrey

Ericsson

Christian Fager

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Microwave Electronics

Christoph Studer

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH)

IEEE Transactions on Communications

0090-6778 (ISSN) 15580857 (eISSN)

Vol. 72 11 7342-7356

Subject Categories

Telecommunications

Communication Systems

DOI

10.1109/TCOMM.2024.3412769

More information

Latest update

12/7/2024