The rationality analysis of massive MIMO virtual measurement at 3.5 GHz

So far, a large amount of the massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) measurement campaigns are carried on by the virtual method (move a single antenna and measure at predefined positions, and then form the multiple antennas in the analysis), since the massive MIMO measurement needs hundreds of antennas, which cost is high and have a lot of difficulties in the implementation. However, to the author's knowledge, there are few investigations to validate the rationality of the virtual measurement. In this paper, we move a 32-element uniform planar array (UPA) on a 2D surface to form a virtual 256-element UPA, and compare its characteristics with the practical MIMO measurement in time and spatial domain, to analyze the rationality of massive MIMO virtual measurement. By the contrast analysis, the feasibility and reasonability of the virtual measurement has been proved.