A Simulation Framework for Multiple-Antenna Terminals in 5G Massive MIMO Systems

The recent interest in massive MIMO has spurred intensive work on massive MIMO channel modeling in contemporary literature. However, current models fail to take the characteristics of terminal antennas into account. There is no massive MIMO channel model available that can be used for evaluation of the influence of different antenna characteristics at the terminal side. In this paper, we provide a simulation framework that fills this gap. We evaluate the framework with antennas integrated into Sony Xperia handsets operating at 3.7 GHz as this spectrum is identified for the 5G new radio standard by 3GPP. The simulation results are compared with measured terminal performance when communicating with the Lund University’s massive MIMO testbed under the same loading conditions. Expressions are derived for comparison of the gain obtained from different diversity schemes computed from measured far-field antenna patterns. We conclude that the simulation framework yields results close to the measured ones and that the framework can be used for antenna evaluation for terminals in a practical precoded massive MIMO system.