Massive MIMO channel modelling for 5G wireless communication systems

Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless communication systems, equipped with tens or even hundreds of antennas, emerge as a promising technology for the Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communication networks. To design and evaluate the performance of massive MIMO wireless communication systems, it is essential to develop accurate, flexible, and efficient channel models which fully reflect the characteristics of massive MIMO channels. In this thesis, four massive MIMO channel models have been proposed. First, a novel non-stationary wideband multi-confocal ellipse Two-Dimensional (2-D) Geometry Based Stochastic Model (GBSM) for massive MIMO channels is proposed. Spherical wavefront is assumed in the proposed channel model, instead of the plane wavefront assumption used in conventional MIMO channel models. In addition, the Birth-Death (BD) process is incorporated into the proposed model to capture the dynamic properties of clusters on both the array and time axes. Second, we propose a novel theoretical non-stationary Three-Dimensional (3-D) wideband twin-cluster channel model for massive MIMO communication systems with carrier frequencies in the order of gigahertz (GHz). As the dimension of antenna arrays cannot be ignored for massive MIMO, nearfield effects instead of farfield effects are considered in the proposed model. These include the spherical wavefront assumption and a BD process to model non-stationary properties of clusters such as cluster appearance and disappearance on both the array and time axes. Third, a novel Kronecker Based Stochastic Model (KBSM) for massive MIMO channels is proposed. The proposed KBSM can not only capture antenna correlations but also the evolution of scatterer sets on the array axis. In addition, upper and lower bounds of KBSM channel capacities in both the high and low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) regimes are derived when the numbers of transmit and receive antennas are increasing unboundedly with a constant ratio. Finally, a novel unified framework of GBSMs for 5G wireless channels is proposed. The proposed 5G channel model framework aims at capturing key channel characteristics of certain 5G communication scenarios, such as massive MIMO systems, High Speed Train (HST) communications, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, and Milli-meter Wave (mmWave) communications