Performance Analysis of Nakagami-m Fading Massive MIMO Channels with Linear Receivers

This paper estimates bounds on the capacity of Nakagami-m fading massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels with large number of antennas at the transmitter and receiver. We consider two models namely conventional co-located MIMO (C-MIMO) and distributed MIMO (D-MIMO) models. At first, we derive the achievable rate for the C-MIMO and D-MIMO systems. Secondly, we use maximum ratio combining (MRC), zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) detectors in the receiver and derive the expression of achievable rate for both the C-MIMO and D-MIMO systems. Finally, we analyze the asymptotic behavior of the ergodic capacity when the number of antennas at one or both sides goes to infinity. Our investigation concludes that the ergodic capacity of both the co-located and distributed MIMO channels is intuitive as the increasing number of antennas helps to eliminate the effect of fading. MMSE detector shows significant performance in enhancing the ergodic capacity of Nakagami-m fading channels compared to ZF and MRC detectors.