Transmission schemes for Multiple Antenna Terminals in Real Massive MIMO systems

In massive MIMO performance evaluations it is often assumed that the terminal has a single antenna. The combination of multiple antennas in a terminal and massive MIMO precoding at the base station side can further improve overall system performance. We present measurement results for multi antenna terminals operating in different transmission schemes and how they perform under varying loading conditions. Gain expressions are derived that enable easy comparison between the transmission schemes. The evaluation is performed on realistic antennas integrated into Sony Xperia handsets tuned to 3.7~GHz and operated together with the Lund University massive MIMO (LuMaMi) test bed. It is concluded that the approach used in today's mobile systems, where up link and down link are addressed independently, will not provide the best performance. The performance can be improved by the selection of transmission schemes optimized for massive MIMO.