The OOB radiation from large arrays with nonlinear hardware has a different radiation pattern than the beamformed in-band signal. This is the main difference between the OOB radiation from large arrays and from well-studied legacy systems. Beamforming might focus the OOB radiation in certain directions but also significantly reduce the total power that has to be transmitted. For cost and power-consumption reasons, large arrays might have to be built from low-complexity hardware without advanced pre-compensation for linearization, which increases the relative amount of OOB radiation. Given that large arrays will be used in future base stations, a correct understanding of the OOB radiation is crucial to specify appropriate linearity requirements for the hardware. We show that the OOB radiation from large arrays varies little between coherence times; it is isotropic in many cases; and when it is beamformed, it is directed toward the served user in a very narrow beam with an array gain equal to or less than that of the in-band signal. We draw the conclusion that, compared to legacy systems, less stringent linearity requirements can be used in many systems with large arrays by virtue of the lower transmit power needed to upkeep the same received signal-to-noise ratio.

In massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), most precoders result in downlink signals that suffer from high peak-to-average ratio (PAR), independently of modulation order and whether single-carrier or orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission is used. The high PAR lowers the power efficiency of the base-station amplifiers. To increase the power efficiency, low-PAR precoders have been proposed. In this paper, we compare different transmission methods for massive MIMO in terms of the power consumed by the amplifiers. It is found that: 1) OFDM and single-carrier transmission have the same performance over a hardened massive MIMO channel and 2) when the higher amplifier power efficiency of low-PAR precoding is taken into account, conventional and low-PAR precoders lead to approximately the same power consumption. Since downlink signals with low PAR allow for simpler and cheaper hardware, than signals with high PAR, therefore, the results suggest that low-PAR precoding with either single-carrier or OFDM transmission should be used in a massive MIMO base station.

Because of the large number of antennas at the base station, the power consumption and cost of the low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) can be substantial. Therefore, we investigate the feasibility of inexpensive, power efficient LNAs, which inherently are less linear. To characterize the nonlinear distortion, we describe the LNAs using a polynomial model, which allows for the derivation of the second-order statistics of the received signal and the distortion. A massive MIMO system that serves one user in line-of-sight is studied. It is shown that the distortion from the LNAs combines coherently and that the SINR of the symbol estimates therefore is limited by the linearity of the LNAs. Furthermore, the impact of a strong transmitter in the adjacent frequency band is investigated. The second-order statistics show how the power from that transmission leaks into the main band and interferes with the symbol estimates.

The high hardware complexity of a massive MIMO base station, which requires hundreds of radio chains, makes it challenging to build commercially.  One way to reduce the hardware complexity and power consumption of the receiver is to lower the resolution of the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs).  We derive an achievable rate for a massive MIMO system with arbitrary quantization and use this rate to show that ADCs with as low as 3 bits can be used without significant performance loss at spectral efficiencies around 3.5 bpcu per user, also under interference from stronger transmitters and with some imperfections in the automatic gain control.

The power consumption of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) grows linearly in the number of antennas in massive MIMO base stations. To reduce power consumption, one-bit ADCs can be used. It is believed that the nonlinear distortion of onebit ADCs makes channel estimation and symbol equalization in such systems computationally complex and resource demanding. In this paper, it is shown that low-complexity linear channel estimation and symbol equalization are feasible in massive MIMO with one-bit ADCs when the number of channel taps is large. The effective SINR of the received symbol estimates of a maximum-ratio combiner with estimated channel state information is 4 dB lower in a system with one-bit ADCs than in an equivalent unquantized system.

We investigate the performance of wideband massive MIMO base stations that use one-bit ADCs for quantizing the uplink signal. Ourmain result is to show that the many taps of the frequency-selective channel make linear combiners asymptotically consistent and the quantization noise additive and Gaussian, which simplifies signal processing and enables the straightforward use of OFDM . We also find that single-carrier systems and OFDM systems are affected in the same way by one-bit quantizers in wideband systems because the distribution of the quantization noise becomes the same in both systems as the number of channel taps grows.

Conventional downlink signals in massive MIMO suffer from high PAR, which requires the power amplifiers of the base station to be backed off to avoid signal distortion, which lowers power efficiency. To improve efficiency, there are precoding schemes that produce signals with low PAR. To compare different precoding schemes, this article estimates their power consumptions through simulations, in which in-band distortion and amplifier efficiency effects are taken into consideration. It is found that, when only in-band distortion and the data rate requirement determine the back-off, the inband distortion is negligible and the power amplifiers can be operated at peak efficiency. It also turns out that low-PAR and conventional, high-PAR, precoding schemes consume approximately the same amount of power when the out-of-band part of the distortion is disregarded.

Massive MIMO (multiple-input–multiple-output) is a multi-antenna technology for cellular wireless communication, where the base station uses a large number of individually controllable antennas to multiplex users spatially.  This technology can provide a high spectral efficiency.  One of its main challenges is the immense hardware complexity and cost of all the radio chains in the base station.  To make massive MIMO commercially viable, inexpensive, low-complexity hardware with low linearity has to be used, which inherently leads to more signal distortion.  This thesis investigates how the degenerated linearity of some of the main components—power amplifiers, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and low-noise amplifiers—affects the performance of the system, with respect to data rate, power consumption and out-of-band radiation. The main results are: Spatial processing can reduce PAR (peak-to-average ratio) of the transmit signals in the downlink to as low as 0B; this, however, does not necessarily reduce power consumption.  In environments with isotropic fading, one-bit ADCs lead to a reduction in effective signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) of 4dB in the uplink and four-bit ADCs give a performance close to that of an unquantized system.  An analytical expression for the radiation pattern of the distortion from nonlinear power amplifiers is derived.  It shows how the distortion is beamformed to some extent, that its gain never is greater than that of the desired signal, and that the gain of the distortion is reduced with a higher number of served users and a higher number of channel taps.  Nonlinear low-noise amplifiers give rise to distortion that partly combines coherently and limits the possible SINR.  It is concluded that spatial processing with a large number of antennas reduces the impact of hardware distortion in most cases.  As long as proper attention is paid to the few sources of coherent distortion, the hardware complexity can be reduced in massive MIMO base stations to overcome the hardware challenge and make massive MIMO commercial reality.

Storskaliga fleranvändar-MIMO-system, med hundratals basstationsantenner, studeras med allt större intresse både inom akademin och industrin. En anledning är att sådana system kan betjäna flera enantennsanvändare samtidigt över samma tids-frekvens-resurs med fleranvändarförkodning. Det innebär högre datahastigheter och bättre spektral effektivitet. En annan anledning är att basstationens energiförbrukning förväntas avta linjärt med antalet antenner tack vare den ökade antennförstärkningen. För att möjliggöra den stora ökningen av antalet antenner, måste priset per antenn, med dess sändtagarkedja, vara lågt. Vore det möjligt att tillverka basstationsantenner av billiga, massproducerade mobiltelefonskomponenter, som effektförstärkare utan avancerad linearisering, då skulle storskalig fleranvändar-MIMO kunna bli verklighet.

Effektförstärkare i mobiltelefoner är generellt anpassade att ha hög verkningsgrad och har, i och med detta, kraftigt olinjära överföringsegenskaper. Det är fördelaktigt att sända signaler med lågt toppvärde genom sådana effektförstärkare, för att undvika svår distortion och för att maximera verkningsgraden genom att endast använda en liten avbackning från arbetspunkten. Konventionellt förkodade signaler har tyvärr högt toppvärde (ca. 10 dB). Detta arbete har undersökt en av Mohammed m.fl. (2013a) föreslagen förkodning för storskalig MIMO som resulterar i sändarsignaler med lågt toppvärde. Det visas att denna förkodning ger signaler med ett toppvärde på 4 dB, och att toppvärdet kan göras godtyckligt litet genom att dessutom begränsa fasvariationen. Ju mer fasen begränsas, desto lägre blir emellertid antennförstärkning. Till exempel om fasvariationen begränsas till π/2, sänks toppvärdet till 2,6 dB, men 2-3 dB högre sändareffekt behövs för att bibehålla samma prestanda eller, likvärdigt, så måste basstationen utrustas med 1,6-2,0 gånger fler antenner. Kontinuerlig fasmodulering som ett sätt att få sändarsignaler med konstant envelopp har studerats kort. Lågtoppvärdesförkodning, där sändarsignalerna ligger innanför en cirkel, föreslås som ett sätt att minska den erfodrade sändareffekten utan att öka toppvärdet märkvärt (<4,5 dB) relativt Mohammeds m.fl. förkodning. Förkodningsalgoritmen som utvecklades för detta fastnade dock i lokala minima, vilket försämrade dess prestanda. Sändareffekten kunde därför endast minskas lite grand (<1 dB) vid höga datahastigheter.

En preliminär länkbudget baserad på en enkel effektförstärkarmodell har visat att, med fullständig kanalkännedom och i frekvensplatt fädning, skulle lågtoppvärdesförkodning kunna minska energiförbrukningen med 33 % jämfört med konventionell, linjär förkodning i en basstation med 100 antenner. Analysen antyder att olineariserade klass AB mobiltelefonseffektförstärkare kan vara ett alternativ för storskalig fleranvändar-MIMO-basstationer.