A Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator for mmWave Massive MIMO Using PYNQ Framework

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) plays an important role in beyond 5G systems to support high data rate and low latency, especially operating at millimeter-wave frequency bands. In traditional software-based simulators, the simulation time increases exponentially with the number of base station antennas and served users. We propose a hardware-in-loop simulator that combines the flexible software and fast and accurate hardware with Python Productivity for Zynq (PYNQ) framework. The simulation of massive MIMO detection is accelerated by 4 orders of magnitudes with bit-accurate result. With the help of the developed simulator, we explore the design trade-offs between system performance and hardware cost for in-flight-cabin use cases.