ZTE Communications ›› 2017, Vol. 15 ›› Issue (1): 3-7.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2017.01.001

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An Overview of Non-Stationary Property for Massive MIMO Channel Modeling

ZHANG Ping, CHEN Jianqiao, TANG Tian   

  1. Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
  • Received:2016-11-11 Online:2017-02-25 Published:2019-12-24
  • About author:ZHANG Ping (pzhang@bupt.edu.cn) got his Ph.D. degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China in 1990, and is currently a professor and doctorial tutor of BUPT, a member of the BUPT academic board, the director of State Key Lab of Networking and Switching Technology, a member of IMT-2020(5G) Group, and a consultancy expert of National Science Foundation Committee (NSFC). His personal research interest is mainly wireless network communications. Prof. ZHANG has published more than 400 papers in journals such as IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Electronics Letters, and Chinese Journal of Electronics and eight books at home and abroad. He holds about 161 patents and was awarded National Science and Technology Progress Prize 5 times.|CHEN Jianqiao (jqchen1988@163.com) received his M.S. degree from the Institute of Communications Engineering, Xidian University, China in 2014, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China. His research interests are in the area of channel modeling and wireless communications.|TANG Tian (tangtian@bupt.edu.cn) is a lecturer in Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communications (Ministry of Education), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China. He received his Ph.D. degree from BUPT in 2004. He has long been engaged in the research and development of mobile communications, and participated in many national projects such as “863”, “973”, and NSFC. He has published more than ten academic papers. He was awarded the First Prize of China Institute of Communications in 2009 and Second Prize of National Technology Innovation in 2010. His research interests include wireless communication theory and technology of physical layer.
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science of Foundation for Creative Research Groups of China under Grant(No. 61421061);Huawei Innovation Research Program

Abstract:

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) emerges as one of the most promising technologies for 5G mobile communication systems. Compared to the conventional MIMO channel models, channel researches and measurements show that significant non-stationary properties rise in massive MIMO channels. Therefore, an accurate channel model is indispensable for the sake of massive MIMO system design and performance evaluation. This article presents an overview of methods of modeling non-stationary properties on both the array and time axes, which are mainly divided into two major categories: birth-death (BD) process and cluster visibility region (VR) method. The main concepts and theories are described, together with useful implementation guidelines. In conclusion, a comparison between these two methods is made.

Key words: birth-death process, cluster visibility region method, massive MIMO channel model, non-stationary properties