A Switched Diversity Scheme for Massive MIMO Systems

With the constraint of antenna space, spatial correlation and mutual coupling must be considered to accurately predict the system performance for massive MIMO systems. Increasing the antenna quantity can degrade the system performance due to mutual coupling. Antenna selection systems have better performance and lower hardware cost than full-MIMO systems. However, the conventional selection combining (SC) scheme consumes a great amount of training overhead and has high operational complexity in the presence of mutual coupling. This paper proposes a group switch-and-examine combining (GSEC) scheme for massive MIMO systems with the spatial correlation and mutual coupling existing at both the transmitter and receiver. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed GSEC scheme provides better effective capacity performance and lower operational complexity than the conventional selection combining (SC) and full-MIMO scheme.