5G NR Massive MIMO Technology

: [The Base Station at 5G and 6G - University of Birmingham]

Massive MIMO - a Key Technology to Delivering Mobile 5G

- Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO)

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) is a wireless technology that uses multiple transmitters and receivers to transfer more data at the same time. All wireless products with 802.11n support MIMO. In radio, MIMO is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using to exploit multipath propagation. The technology helps allow 802.11n to reach higher speeds than products without 802.11n.

MIMO has become an essential element of wireless communication standards including IEEE 802.11n (Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi), HSPA+ (3G), WiMAX (4G), and Long Term Evolution (4G LTE). More recently, MIMO has been applied to power-line communication for 3-wire installations as part of ITU G.hn standard and HomePlug AV2 specification.

Multiple antennas for both transmitters and receivers vastly improve communication performance. Many modern telecommunications standards, particularly in the consumer space, have adopted multiple antenna (MIMO) technology because of the significant advantages it provides over similar system utilizing single antenna transceivers (SISO).

To implement MIMO, the station (mobile device) or the access point (AP) must support MIMO. For optimal performance and range, both the station and the AP must support MIMO.

- Massive MIMO

Massive MIMO is a technology of using many antennas to control the beamforming and enable spatial multiplexing. Base stations consisting of large numbers of antennas that simultaneously communicate with multiple spatially separated user terminals over the same frequency resource and exploit multipath propagation are one option to achieve this efficiency saving. This technology is often referred to as massive MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output).

Massive MIMO, is an extension of MIMO, which essentially groups together antennas at the transmitter and receiver to provide better throughput and better spectrum efficiency. Massive MIMO technology is all set to be a core component of the super-fast 5G networks that will commence rolling out from the end of 2019.

[5G.co.uk]: "MIMO stands for Multiple-input multiple-output. While it involves multiple technologies, MIMO can essentially be boiled down to this single principle: a wireless network that allows the transmitting and receiving of more than one data signal simultaneously over the same radio channel. Standard MIMO networks tend to use two or four antennas. Massive MIMO, on the other hand, is a MIMO system with an especially high number of antennas. There’s no set figure for what constitutes a Massive MIMO set-up, but the description tends to be applied to systems with tens or even hundreds of antennas. For example, Huawei, ZTE, and Facebook have demonstrated Massive MIMO systems with as many as 96 to 128 antennas. Ericsson’s AIR 6468, which the company claims is "the world's first 5G NR radio", uses 64 transmit and 64 receive antennas."