Spectral Efficiency Analysis for Uplink Multicell Massive MIMO Cellular Communication System under Fading Channels

In multicell massive MIMO system, the maximum limit on area throughput can be achieved by improving spectral efficiency and cell density, as well as bandwidth. In order to evaluate the area throughput for such scenarios, the spectral efficiency (SE) that utilizes the linear zero forcing uplink combining scheme, can be modeled under the Rician fading channel and the BS in case of up-links, is responsible to estimate the channel. Different from existing work, the proposed model incorporates various estimators such as minimum mean square error (MMSE), element-wise minimum mean square error estimators under Rician fading. The multicell scenarios with uplink (UL) massive MIMO has been analyzed using the proposed model under different cases such as pilot reuse factor, coherence block length, different number of antennas, and different estimators. The simulation results and analysis are presented based on these parameters. It is found that the average summation of SE per cell can be improved by optimizing MMSE channel estimation using ZF UL combiner, installing multiple BS antennas, serving multiple number of UEs per cell, and using efficient pilot reuse factor. The MMSE and ZF uplink combining are found to be more suitable in improving SE as compared to MMSE-MR. For example, the uplink SE of MMSE channel estimator for pilot reuse factors, 1, 3, and 4, is calculated as 22.5 bit/s/Hz/cell, 22.3 bit/s/Hz/cell, and 21 bit/s/Hz/cell, respectively. The uplink SE for EW-MMSE channel estimator with pilot reuse factors, 1, 3, and 4, is calculated as 22.5 bit/s/Hz/cell, 22 bit/s/Hz/cell, and 22 bit/s/Hz/cell, respectively. For the uplink SE of LS channel estimators, it can be 17.9 bit/s/Hz/cell, 20.2 bit/s/Hz/cell, and 20 bit/s/Hz/cell with pilot reuse factors as f = 1, 3, and 4, respectively. So, for f = 3, the maximum calculated uplink SE for MMSE, EW-MMSE, and LS is 17.6 bit/s/Hz/cell, 17.8 bit/s/Hz/cell, and 13 bit/s/Hz/cell, respectively. It can be concluded that the improved performance is obtained by reducing the pilot contamination at a pilot reuse factor f = 3 with different values of SNR, coherence block length, number of UEs, and number of BS antennas. There is also trade-off between the pilot contamination mitigation and the larger SE. However, there is not much effect on coherence block as when it increases, then the SE increases as well.