Orthogonally Precoded Massive MIMO for High Mobility Scenarios

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are of high interest for ultrareliable low-latency communication (URLLC) links. They provide channel hardening, i.e. reduced channel variations, due to the large number of transmit antennas which exploit spatial diversity by beam-forming. Massive MIMO requires channel state information (CSI) on the base station side. For time-varying vehicular communication channels the CSI acquired during the uplink phase will be outdated for the following downlink phase, leading to reduced spatial channel hardening. We investigate a combination of massive MIMO with general orthogonal precoding (OP) to compensate this effect. OP uses two-dimensional precoding sequences in the time-frequency domain and provides channel hardening by exploiting timeand frequency diversity. We show that the combination of massive MIMO and OP is beneficial for timevarying communication channels. While the spatial channel hardening of massive MIMO decreases, the time-frequency channel hardening of OP increases with larger time-variance of the communication channel. An iterative receiver algorithm for massive MIMO with OP as well as a detailed analysis of the channel hardening effect is presented. We demonstrate a BER reduction by more than one order of magnitude for a velocity of 50 km/h = 16; 6 m/s using the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based 5G new radio (NR) physical layer.