Terahertz Massive MIMO for Beyond-5G Wireless Communication

Spectrum use will undoubtedly move to the terahertz (THz) frequencies in the beyond fifth-generation (B5G) mobile system era. With enormous bandwidth far greater than the amount available in the microwave and millimeter-wave bands combined, THz communication will open up new frontiers for exciting services and applications requiring ultra-broadband connectivity. In this work, we evaluate the performance of a candidate B5G scenario with THz-enabled massive MIMO access points mounted on street lampposts to serve pedestrian users. Using spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) as metrics, we compared the performance of three precoding schemes, namely: analog-only beamsteering, hybrid precoding with baseband zero forcing and singular value decomposition precoding as upper bound. We also show the impacts of carrier frequency, bandwidth and antenna gain on the system performance. The simulation results reveal the optimal EE and SE points which are critical design goals for the green and sustainable operation of next-generation networks.