Gain Compensation of Massive MIMO for Shifting from 4G to 5G Mobile Communications

Massive MIMO becomes a key technology for the fifth generation (5G) of mobile communications that will improve major performances such as higher data rates, more reliability, lower latency and more channel capacities. Along with the requirement of higher frequency bandwidth in 5G, the most referred frequency band is in the range of 26-28 GHz which has an extremely short wavelength. Thus it naturally causes the shortening of the signal distribution distance due to the large signal attenuation. Comparing with the 4G mobile communication, the overall performance of 5G could be inferior to 4G by higher frequency band but it can be compensated by using more number of antennas for massive MIMO integrating with more antenna gain for each antenna element. In this paper, the study of gain effect to improve the performance of 5G communications is presented. The key performances in terms of throughput and spectral efficiency are examined to be a useful guideline for further designing on 5G massive MIMO.