Massive MIMO Beamforming Analysis for 5g Systems

Abstract

Multiple input multiple outputs, MIMO Technology is based on the usage of multiple receivers and transmitters or antennas at the sending and receiving end of a signal, to increase the throughput and capacity of the network. The number of antennas in a MIMO station can reach up to eight. The Massive MIMO is like the simple MIMO, with the only difference is the number of antennas can reach hundreds. Massive MIMO operates in time division duplex mode, which means the channel has reciprocal properties of radio propagation. The base station calculates an estimate the channel capacity from the uplink pilots transmitted by the end user. This gives us the technology advantage of scalability with the respect of the base station's antenna numbers. In this paper, the MIMO and massive MIMO systems are presented and compared in terms of BER and Beamforming capabilities.