Large Scale Massive MIMO Field Trial for 5G Mobile Communications System

Higher spectrum efficiency is a target of the 5th generation (5G) mobile communications system. Massive MIMO is considered as one of important technologies for that purpose. Under the practical conditions that the number of antennas on user equipment (UE) is limited, multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) is a probable use scenario of Massive MIMO. Furthermore, massive connectivity is another important target, and MU-MIMO under high UE correlations could occur in the massive connectivity scenarios. By taking these targets and scenarios into account, Huawei and NTT DOCOMO have conducted a large scale field trial to evaluate the feasibility of massive MIMO, especially the performance of linear, nonlinear, and hybrid precoding MU-MIMO schemes.