Linear Precoder Performance for Massive MIMO Systems in near LOS Environments: Application to mmWave Transmission

As the wireless communication network is driven toward densification with small cell deployments, massive MIMO technology shows great promises to boost capacity and energy efficiency. This paper aims at showing how raising carrier frequencies impacts the performance of the linear precoders used in Massive MIMO systems. By means of a geometrical deterministic channel model, we simulate a dense outdoor scenario and highlight the influence of the direct and multi-paths components. More importantly we prove that, in a Line-of-Sight configuration, the discriminating skills of the well known Zero Forcing precoder is much more sensitive to the antenna array architecture and the user location than the Conjugate precoder.