Massive MIMO: survey and future research topics

Abstract

Massive multiple-input multiple-output technology has been considered a breakthrough in wireless communication systems. It consists of equipping a base station with a large number of antennas to serve many active users in the same time-frequency block. Among its underlying advantages is the possibility to focus transmitted signal energy into very short-range areas, which will provide huge improvements in terms of system capacity. However, while this new concept renders many interesting benefits, it brings up new challenges that have called the attention of both industry and academia: channel state information acquisition, channel feedback, instantaneous reciprocity, statistical reciprocity, architectures, and hardware impairments, just to mention a few. This paper presents an overview of the basic concepts of massive multiple-input multiple-output, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities, based on contemporary research.