Non-Coherent Massive MIMO Systems: A Constellation Design Approach

In this paper, a joint multi-user constellation is proposed for energy detection-based non-coherent massive multiple-input multiple-output system. This is motivated by the simple design and high energy efficiency it entails for both the transmitter and receiver. Although it is unsolvable initially, our analysis indicates through minimizing the symbol-error rate (SER), the joint constellation design becomes feasible. Concretely, two analytical expressions of SER based on Gamma and Gaussian distributions are derived. Via minimizing the error probability, an important result that the joint constellation must satisfy is obtained. Accordingly, an isometric constellation design is proposed to find constellations that enable non-coherent reception with multiple users, and achieve the minimum SER simultaneously. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out to highlight the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.