Performance Analysis and Optimization of Multicell Massive MIMO With Variable-Resolution ADCs Over Correlated Rayleigh Fading Channels

This article makes performance analysis and optimization for multicell massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems with variable-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). In such an architecture, every ADC uses arbitrary quantization resolution to save power and hardware cost. Along this direction, we first introduce a quantization-aware channel estimator based on linear minimum mean-squared error (LMMSE) estimate theory over spatially correlated Rayleigh fading channels. By leveraging on the estimated channel state information (CSI), we derive the theoretical expressions of the achievable uplink spectral efficiency (SE) for maximal ratio combining (MRC), quantization-aware multicell minimum mean-squared error (QA-M-MMSE) combining, and quantization-aware single-cell MMSE (QA-S-MMSE) combining, respectively. We consider the impacts of quantization errors and resort to random matrix theory to derive theoretical results. Afterwards, power and bit allocation problems are investigated under the variable-resolution architecture. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that our theoretical analyses are correct and that the proposed quantization-aware estimator and combiners are more beneficial than their quantization-unaware counterparts. Moreover, simulation results also verify the conclusions of the proposed power and bit allocation schemes.