Space-Time Consistency Modeling for Non-Stationary Massive MIMO Environments

Massive multiple input multiple output (mMIMO) is a promising technology for the next-generation wireless communication systems, yet accurate channel modeling is still a challenging problem. Recent field experiments revealed that, the channel is non-stationary in space, time and frequency (STF) domains. Meanwhile, it is also disclosed that, the channel changes in a smooth way. Namely, the channel should be consistent in space and time domains. This paper proposes a three-dimensional (3D) space-time consistency modeling method for the STF non-stationary mMIMO environments. Innovatively, a growth-curve based power attenuation factor (PAF) is introduced to evolve the birth and death (BD) process of the scattering clusters, so that the space-time consistency can be guaranteed. In validation experiments, the modeled channel characteristics are in good agreements with the measured ones, indicating that the proposed method is suitable for mMIMO channel modelling.