User-Centric Cell-Free Massive MIMO for IoT in Highly Dynamic Environments

Cell-free massive multiple-input-multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) network and its low-complexity user-centric (UC) alternative rely on accurate and up-to-date channel state information (CSI) for combining and/or precoding a large number of signals received by the distributed antenna array to achieve their anticipated performance gains. When serving highly mobile Internet of Things (IoT) devices, limited Line-of-Sight (LoS) information and nonnegligible channel aging (CA) effects will undermine CSI acquisition and inevitably degrade system performance. As a result, fundamental limit assessment and performance degradation mitigation under imperfect CSI are important for practical system designs. In this article, we focus on the performance of UC CF-mMIMO IoT systems in the interaction of sufficient and insufficient LoS knowledge, nonisotropic Non-LoS components, and heterogeneous CA effects. The novel and exact closed-form expressions for uplink spectral efficiency (SE) under the impaired CSI are derived. Numerical results verify the correctness of the SE expressions and reveal that the system parameters, such as resource block length and pilot overhead, should be optimally preconfigured according to environmental information and transmission tasks to alleviate the performance degradation caused by the imperfect CSI. Finally, a UC soft handover scheme is designed to enhance the mobility support of CF-mMIMO IoT systems in practical implementation.