Multi-User Massive MIMO Communication Systems Based on Irregular Antenna Arrays

In practical mobile communication engineering applications, surfaces of antenna array deployment regions are usually uneven. Therefore, massive multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) communication systems usually transmit wireless signals by irregular antenna arrays. To evaluate the performance of irregular antenna arrays, the matrix correlation coefficient and the ergodic received gain are defined for massive MIMO communication systems with mutual coupling effects. Furthermore, the lower bound of the ergodic achievable rate, symbol error rate, and average outage probability is first derived for multi-user massive MIMO communication systems using irregular antenna arrays. Asymptotic results are also derived when the number of antennae approaches infinity. Numerical results indicate that there exists a maximum achievable rate when the number of antennae keeps increasing in massive MIMO communication systems using irregular antenna arrays. Moreover, the irregular antenna array outperforms the regular antenna array in the achievable rate of massive MIMO communication systems when the number of antennae is larger than or equal to a given threshold.