Frequency Domain Detection and Precoding for Massive MIMO With Single Carrier Modulation

Single carrier modulation (SCM) schemes are attractive for uplink (UL) transmissions due to improved power efficiency at the user equipment (UE) transmitter compared with multi-carrier modulation schemes. In a massive MIMO scenario with SCM, the UL detection must mitigate the effects of inter-symbol interference and multi-user interference. This processing is effectively performed in the frequency domain (FD) using a minimum mean squared error (MMSE) detector when the transmission is framed with a cyclic prefix. This paper analyzes an MMSE-based detector compatible with distributed processing in a time-division duplex (TDD) system. The matrix inverses computed for the UL detection are then reused to perform multi-user precoding for the downlink (DL). We find that this scheme yields tremendous savings in computational complexity compared to commonly used zero-forcing (ZF) precoding without sacrificing any performance. Since MMSE processing introduces a bias to the estimates, we derive the scalar coefficients necessary to cancel the MMSE bias. The impact of channel estimation errors is analyzed for both the UL and DL cases in conjunction with a power-efficient approach to SCM channel estimation. Moreover, extensive simulations are performed to confirm our theoretical findings.