Aging-robust precoding in near-field cell-free massive MIMO with mobile multi-antenna users
Citation Link: https://doi.org/10.15480/882.19307
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2026-12
Sprache
English
TORE-DOI
Citation
IEEE Global Communications Conference, GLOBECOM 2026
Contribution to Conference
Peer Reviewed
true
We propose a channel-aging-robust precoding scheme for multi-antenna users in a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system operating at mmWave frequencies under line-of-sight (LoS) propagation. The proposed approach leverages instantaneous channel state information (CSI) at the receiver to compensate for outdated CSI at the transmitter, which arises due to user mobility and fronthaul latency in centralized architectures. To motivate the design, we analyze the spatial structure of the resulting near-field beampatterns formed by cooperating access points (APs) and show that their inherent periodicity can be exploited to obtain systematic spatial diversity gains at the multi-antenna users. We investigate the impact of user mobility on the downlink spectral efficiency and demonstrate that multi-antenna users can partially mitigate channel aging effects, particularly for small serving clusters. Numerical results reveal that the proposed approach reduces sensitivity to latency constraints and enables significant performance gains compared to a small-cell system under channel aging, reaching more than four times the 90%-likely per-user spectral efficiency in highly populated scenarios.
Subjects
Cell-free massive MIMO
near-field
mmWave communications
channel aging
spatial diversity
multi-antenna users
DDC Class
621.38: Electronics, Communications Engineering
004: Computer Sciences
Publication version
acceptedVersion