A ZF-Based Precoding Scheme with Phase Noise Suppression for Massive MIMO Downlink Systems

In wireless communications, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems in which the base station (BS) is equipped with a large number of antennas can provide significant spectral and energy efficiency by means of simple signal processing. Therefore, massive MIMO is an attractive technology for next-generation wireless communication systems and for green communications. However, phase noise (PN) introduced by the impairment of oscillators can cause a severe performance loss in wireless communication systems. Solving the PN problem for massive MIMO systems in both the downlink and uplink is challenging as it is a multivariate joint PN estimation and data detection problem. The optimal solution is difficult to derive and may lead to high complexity. In this paper, we propose a zero-forcing (ZF) based precoding scheme with PN suppression to solve the PN problem for massive MIMO downlink systems. By using the ideal PN free output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the ZF precoding as a performance upper bound, analytical and numerical results show that when the required SNR is satisfied, the output SNR of the proposed scheme can approach the upper bound, except for very large PN variances. Moreover, the complexity of the proposed scheme is low on both the BS and the user sides, and the BS does not need any feedback information from the users. © 1967-2012 IEEE.