Analysis of Transmission Schemes for Dual-Antenna Terminals in Massive MIMO Systems

The overall system performance of massive MIMO is improved by equipping user terminals with multiple antennas. In this paper, we investigate transceiver designs for the case of a single downlink stream and in particular, we study the uplink pilot design. Moreover, we study the consequences of channel estimation errors at the base-station, and to what extent a dual-antenna terminal can get access to relevant channel statistics for optimization of the pilot signal. Gain expressions for comparison of different designs are derived. We verify the analytic results based on antennas integrated into Sony-Xperia handsets measured with the Lund University massive MIMO testbed. The measurements are performed at frequencies <6GHz since this part of the spectrum is a candidate for NR standard according to 3GPP.