The effect of channel spatial correlation on capacity and energy efficiency of massive MIMO systems

Massive MIMO is an emerging technology that has the potential of bringing huge improvements to wireless communications in the future. This paper investigates the effects of spatial correlation on the capacity and energy efficiency of massive MIMO. We use a channel covariance matrix that is generated according to the one ring model. We consider linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) for estimating channel properties with pilot signals. The impact of channels spatial correlation on the capacity and energy efficiency of the massive MIMO model used in this paper are demonstrated using computer simulation. We show that the capacity and energy efficacy improve as the correlation between the channels is reduced.