Massive MIMO, mmWave and mmWave-Massive MIMO Communications: Performance Assessment with Beamforming Techniques

Abstract A considerable amount of enabling technologies are being explored in the era of fifth generation (5G) mobile system. The dream is to build a wireless network that substantially improves the existing mobile networks in all performance metrics. To address this 5G design targets, massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) and mmWave (millimeter wave) communication are also candidate technologies. Luckily, in many respects these two technologies share a symbiotic integration. Accordingly, a logical step is to integrate mmWave communications and massive MIMO to form mmWave-massive MIMO which substantially increases user throughput, improve spectral and energy efficiencies, increase the capacity of mobile networks and achieve high multiplexing gains. Thus, this work analyses the concepts, performances, comparison and discussion of these technologies called: massive MIMO, mmWave Communications and mmWave-massive MIMO systems jointly. Besides, outcomes of extensive researches, emerging trends together with their respective benefits, challenges, proposed solutions and their comparative analysis is addressed. The performance of hybrid analog-digital beamforming architecture with a fully digital and analog beamforming techniques are also analyzed. Analytical and simulation results show that the low-complexity hybrid analog-digital precoding achieves all round comparable precoding gains for mmWave-Massive MIMO technology.