Massive MIMO Muting using Dual-polarized and Array-size Invariant Beamforming

A method for massive MIMO antenna muting for reducing energy consumption in 5G NR is presented and system level evaluated results is provided. By utilizing both polarizations of a dual-polarized antenna array the resulting beam shape can be kept constant as the number of active antenna elements are changed. This enables the number of active antenna elements in a large-scale antenna array to be adapted to traffic variations without affecting the system coverage. Hence the energy consumption associated with having a large antenna array can be avoided whenever the additional performance is not required. The results indicate that massive MIMO antenna muting can reduce the base station energy consumption with up to 30% without significantly degrading the system performance and user throughput. Results for dynamically down scaling of massive MIMO array sizes from 128 single polarized antenna elements to 64, 32 and 16 active antenna element configurations are presented.