A genetic antenna selection algorithm with heuristic beamforming for massive MIMO systems

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), also known as very-large MIMO systems, is an attracting technique in 5G, as it can provide higher rates and power efficiency than 4G. However the radio-frequency(RF) chains associated with the antennas increase the system complexity and cost. Antenna selection is an effective way to reduce the number of RF chains. In this paper, we proposed an antenna selection scheme based on genetic algorithm and a heuristic beam-forming technique is used to obtain high performance with a low computation complexity. Numerical results suggest that the proposed scheme outperforms the sub optimal antenna selection and approaches the performance of exhaustive search scheme but with a much lower complexity.