Evaluation of different quantization resolution levels on the BER performance of massive MIMO systems under different operating scenarios

Abstract

The massive MIMO system is one of the main technologies in the fifth generation (5G) of telecommunication systems, also recognized as a highly large-scale system. Constantly in massive MIMO systems, the base station (BS) is provided with a large number of antennas, and this large number of antennas need high-quantization resolution levels analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). In this situation, there will be more power consumption and hardware costs. This paper presents the simulation performance of a suggested method to investigate and analyze the effects of different quantization resolution levels of ADCs on the bit error rate (BER) performance of massive MIMO system under different operating scenarios using MATLAB software. The results show that the SNR exceeds 12 dB accounts for only 0.001% of BER signals when the number of antennas 60 with low quantization a 2 bits’ levels ADCs, approximately. But when the antenna number rises to 300, the SNR exceeds 12 dB accounts for almost 0.01% of BER transmitted signals. Comparably with the BER performance of high quantization, 4 bits-quantization resolution levels ADCs with the same different antennas have a slight degradation. Therefore, the number of antennas is a very important influence factor.