Spectral Efficiency of Time-Variant Massive MIMO Using Wiener Prediction

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) serves as technological pillar in current 5G deployments. The spectral efficiency (SE) reduction due to time-variance of the wireless channel, and respective mitigation strategies, are still not sufficiently understood. In this letter, we propose a multi-step Wiener predictor with a general temporal covariance function to quantify the impact of time-variance on the SE for different numbers of consecutive pilot symbols and prediction horizons. We provide asymptotic expressions of the SE for maximum ratio combining (MRC) beam-forming that show excellent agreement to numerical simulations. We investigate the channel hardening capability of massive MIMO systems in time-variant propagation channels and show that it is largely independent of the prediction horizon. The numerical evaluations show that channel prediction allows to double SE utilizing four instead of one uplink pilot symbol for a prediction horizon of
$0.3\,\lambda $
for both MRC and regularized zero-forcing (RZF) beam-forming.