Performance Analysis of Cell-Free Massive MIMO Over Spatially Correlated Fading Channels

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a promising network architecture for future wireless systems. This paper investigates the uplink performance of cell-free massive MIMO systems employing the least-square (LS) estimator over spatially correlated fading channels. We first derive a generalized closed-form expression of the spectral efficiency as a function of the number of access point (AP) antennas and the spatial correlation matrices. We use this result to analyze the impact that the fronthaul, number of users and number of APs have on the energy efficiency. Compared to traditional co-located massive MIMO using maximum ratio combining (MRC), our analysis shows that the large performance gain of cell-free massive MIMO with low-complexity linear LS estimators.