Enabling Practical Large-Scale MIMO in WLANs With Hybrid Beamforming

In theory, the capacity of a wireless network grows linearly with the number of users and antennas equipped at the communication devices, and hence large-scale MU-MIMO can scale up the network throughput. However, three main challenges are impeding the implementation of this promising technology in the state-of-the-art WLANs. Firstly, the current large-scale MU-MIMO technology demands a large number of high-priced RF chains. Secondly, the wireless access points (APs) are overwhelmed by channel state information (CSI) feedback for nulling multi-user and -antenna interference. Thirdly, the lack of scalable user selection scheme limits the capability of APs to serve a large user population. To address these problems, we design BUSH, a large-scale MU-MIMO prototype that performs scalable beam user selection with hybrid beamforming for phased-array antennas in legacy WLANs. We design a low complexity algorithm that assigns each pair of RF chain and analog beam to the users to effectively reduce channel correlation and cross-talk interference without instantaneous CSI feedbacks. As a prerequisite of user selection, BUSH presents a low-overhead probing scheme in multi-carrier WLANs and designs a highly accurate blind Power Azimuth Spectrum (PAS) estimation algorithm using a single RF chain. For reducing the number of RF-chains used, the phased-array antennas use analog beamforming to steer beams toward each selected downlink user, and multiple RF chains use beamforming to further mitigate the interference among users. We implement BUSH on a software-defined radio platform and evaluate its performance in more than 30 indoor scenarios. The experimental results reveal that for throughput, BUSH outperforms the legacy 802.11ac by 2.08×, and an alternative benchmark system by 1.22× on average.