Millimeter Wave Massive MIMO Downlink Per-Group Communications with Hybrid Linear Precoding

We address the problem of analyzing and classifying in groups the downlink channel environment in a millimeter- wavelength cell, accounting for path loss, multipath fading, and User Equipment (UE) blocking, by employing a hybrid propagation and multipath fading model, thus using accurate inter-group interference modeling. The base station (BS) employs a large Uniform Planar Array (UPA) to facilitate massive Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) communications with high efficiency. UEs are equipped with a single antenna and are distributed uniformly within the cell. The key problem is analyzing and defining groups toward precoding. Because equitable throughput is desired between groups, Combined Frequency and Spatial Division and Multiplexing (CFSDM) is found to be necessary. We show that by employing three subcarrier frequencies, the UEs can be efficiently separated into high throughput groups, with each group employing Virtual Channel Model Beams (VCMB) based inner precoding, followed by efficient Multi-User MultipleInput Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) outer precoders. For each group, we study three different sub-grouping methods offering different advantages. We show that the improvement offered by Zero-Forcing Per-Group Precoding (ZF-PGP) over Zero-Forcing Precoding (ZFP) is very high.