Albatross

Innovative applications of wireless services pose new and diverse connectivity requirements beyond what can be supported by current wireless networks. Massive MIMO (MaMi) is a confirmed and conceptually proven critical technology for 5G, with the potential to address many of these unresolved needs. MaMi achieves unprecedented spectral efficiency and energy efficiency through the use of an excess unconventionally large number of antennas at the base station. The main concept consists of exploiting and developing MaMi technology to address expanded connectivity requirements in terms of capacity, coverage, reliability, and power consumption. MaMi has been shown conceptually to offer superior performance in terms of both spectrum spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. It makes a clean break with current technology by using arrays with tens or even hundreds of antennas at the base stations, which simultaneously serve many tens of low-complexity terminals in the same time time-frequency resource through closed-loop spatial multiplexing/de-multiplexing (multi-user MIMO precoding/decoding). A 10x or more increase in gross throughput can be achieved and has been conceptually, proven with MaMi. Perhaps even more important is the significant gain in reliability due to flattening out of deep fades, hardening of the channel, and achieving an array gain that extends coverage. This effect is proven by the measurements performed in real-life MaMi test-bed