Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a key technology in modern cellular wireless communication systems to attain a very high system throughput in a dynamic multi-user environment. Massive MIMO relies on deploying base stations equipped with a large number of antenna elements. One possible way to deploy base stations equipped with hundreds or thousands of antennas is creating extremely large aperture arrays. In this paper, we investigate channel modeling aspects of massive MIMO systems with large aperture arrays, in which many users are located in the near-field of the aperture. Oneand two-dimensional antenna geometries, different propagation models, and antenna element patterns are compared in terms of inter-user correlation, condition number of the multi-user channel matrix, and spectral efficiency to identify key design parameters and essential modeling assumptions. As our analysis reveals by choosing spectral-efficiency as a design objective, the size of the aperture is the critical design parameter.
Modelling and estimation of carrier frequency and phase uncertainties in large aperture arrays
