Rate Analysis of Uplink Massive MIMO With Low-Resolution ADCs and ZF Detectors Over Rician Fading Channels

In order to increase energy efficiency (EE), analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with a low resolution are used to reduce the internal power consumption in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this letter, we derive the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) of massive MIMO systems with low-resolution ADCs over Rician fading channels and using zero-forcing (ZF) detectors. To obtain a closed-form expression of the sum rate, we adopt the additive quantization noise model (AQNM), where the quantization noise is treated as an additive and independent noise. Our analysis is supported by various numerical results. For instance, compared with Rayleigh fading, specific conditions under Rician fading are needed to keep a good tradeoff between EE and system performance while using low-resolution ADCs.