Analysis of Alternative Massive MIMO Designs: Superimposed Pilots and Mixed-ADCs

In the development of new technologies like Massive MIMO, many design alternatives need to be evaluated and compared in order to find the best operating point with a preferable tradeoff between high performance and low cost. In this thesis, two alternative designs for signal processing and hardware in Massive MIMO are studied and compared with the baseline operation in terms of SE, EE, and power consumption. The first design is called superimposed pilot (SP) transmission and is based on superimposing pilot and data symbols to remove the overhead from pilot transmission and reduce pilot contamination. The second design is mixed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and it aims at balancing high performance and low complexity by allowing different ADC bit resolutions across the BS antennas.

The results show that the baseline operation of Massive MIMO, properly optimized, is the preferred choice. However, SP and mixed ADCs still have room for improvement and further study is needed to ascertain the full capabilities of these alternative designs.