How Wireless Dumb Devices Could Attain High Data Rates Thanks to Smart Massive MIMO Networks

For the first time, we present and evaluate the performance of a communication system between a dumb device and a smart massive multiple input multiple output (M-MIMO) antenna at the network side. The dumb device simply transmits and receives a single carrier waveform and uses a simple single tap equalizer, without any channel coding. At the network side, a transmit space-time matched filter is used to deliver the data to the device, in downlink, through a nearly single tap (effective) channel. Still at the network side, a receive space-time matched filter is used to receive data from the device, in uplink. A performance evaluation study based on indoor and outdoor M-MIMO channel measurements show that antenna arrays of 64 antenna elements are smart enough to deliver at least 18 Mbits/s and up to 72 Mbits/s, with a bit-error-rate (BER) below 10(exp -4), to dumb devices in both uplink and downlink directions. Future works will focus on implementation challenges.