A Heterogeneous Massive MIMO Technique for Uniform Service in Cellular Networks

2026-01-26

AI Summary

This work addresses the poor quality of service experienced by cell-edge users in conventional cellular networks and the prohibitively high deployment cost of cell-free systems, which offer uniform service but require extensive infrastructure. To bridge this gap, the paper proposes a heterogeneous massive MIMO architecture that integrates centralized base stations with distributed edge access points. By leveraging antenna resource partitioning and cooperative transmission mechanisms, the proposed scheme significantly reduces hardware complexity and fronthaul overhead while maintaining user fairness. Theoretical analysis and numerical results demonstrate that the architecture achieves performance close to that of cell-free systems yet requires far fewer access points, thereby striking a superior balance between system cost and service quality compared to both traditional cellular and pure cell-free approaches.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Cloud, edge and content delivery systems for the Web
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Federated recommendation systems and personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Traditional cellular networks struggle with poor quality of service (QoS) for cell-edge users, while cell-free (CF) systems offer uniform QoS but incur high roll-out costs due to acquiring numerous access point (AP) sites and deploying a large-scale optical fiber network to connect them. This paper proposes a cost-effective heterogeneous massive MIMO architecture that integrates centralized co-located antennas at a cell-center base station with distributed edge APs. By strategically splitting massive antennas between centralized and distributed nodes, the system maintains high user fairness comparable to CF systems but reduces infrastructure costs substantially, by minimizing the required number of AP sites and fronthaul connections. Numerical results demonstrate its superiority in balancing performance and costs compared to cellular and CF systems.

Problem

• Quality of Service
• Cell-edge users
• Cell-free systems
• Deployment cost
• Heterogeneous networks

Innovation

• Heterogeneous Massive MIMO
• Cell-free Systems
• User Fairness
• Cost-effective Architecture
• Fronthaul Reduction