In future high-capacity wireless systems based on mmWave or massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO), the power consumption of receiver Analog to Digital Converters (ADC) is a concern. Although hybrid or analog systems with fewer ADCs have been proposed, fully digital receivers with many lower resolution ADCs (and lower power) may be a more versatile solution. In this paper, focusing on an uplink scenario, we propose to take the optimization of ADC resolution one step further by enabling variable resolutions in the ADCs that sample the signal received at each antenna. This allows to give more bits to the antennas that capture the strongest incoming signal and fewer bits to the antennas that capture little signal energy and mostly noise. Simulation results show that, depending on the unquantized link SNR, a power saving in the order of 20-80 can be obtained by our variable resolution proposal in comparison with a reference fully digital receiver with a fixed low number of bits in all its ADCs.
The low-resolution analog-to-digital convertor (ADC) is a promising solution to significantly reduce the power consumption of radio frequency circuits in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this letter, we investigate the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) of massive MIMO systems with low-resolution ADCs over Rician fading channels, where both perfect and imperfect channel state information are considered. By modeling the quantization noise of low-resolution ADCs as an additive quantization noise, we derive tractable and exact approximation expressions of the uplink SE of massive MIMO with the typical maximal-ratio combining (MRC) receivers. We also analyze the impact of the ADC resolution, the Rician @math -factor, and the number of antennas on the uplink SE. Our derived results reveal that the use of low-cost and low-resolution ADCs can still achieve satisfying SE in massive MIMO systems. Hybrid analog digital multiple-input multiple-output architectures were recently proposed as an alternative for fully digital-precoding in millimeter wave wireless communication systems. This is motivated by the possible reduction in the number of RF chains and analog-to-digital converters. In these architectures, the analog processing network is usually based on variable phase shifters. In this paper, we propose hybrid architectures based on switching networks to reduce the complexity and the power consumption of the structures based on phase shifters. We define a power consumption model and use it to evaluate the energy efficiency of both structures. To estimate the complete MIMO channel, we propose an open-loop compressive channel estimation technique that is independent of the hardware used in the analog processing stage. We analyze the performance of the new estimation algorithm for hybrid architectures based on phase shifters and switches. Using the estimate, we develop two algorithms for the design of the hybrid combiner based on switches and analyze the achieved spectral efficiency. Finally, we study the tradeoffs between power consumption, hardware complexity, and spectral efficiency for hybrid architectures based on phase shifting networks and switching networks. Numerical results show that architectures based on switches obtain equal or better channel estimation performance to that obtained using phase shifters, while reducing hardware complexity and power consumption. For equal power consumption, all the hybrid architectures provide similar spectral efficiencies. Motivated by the demand for energy-efficient communication solutions in the next generation cellular network, a mixed-ADC architecture for massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems is proposed, which differs from previous works in that herein one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) partially replace the conventionally assumed high-resolution ADCs. The information-theoretic tool of generalized mutual information (GMI) is exploited to analyze the achievable data rates of the proposed system architecture and an array of analytical results of engineering interest are obtained. For fixed single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) channels, a closed-form expression of the GMI is derived, based on which the linear combiner is optimized. The analysis is then extended to ergodic fading channels, for which tight lower and upper bounds of the GMI are obtained. Impacts of dithering and imperfect channel state information (CSI) are also investigated, and it is shown that dithering can remarkably improve the system performance while imperfect CSI only introduces a marginal rate loss. Finally, the analytical framework is applied to the multiuser access scenario. Numerical results demonstrate that the mixed-ADC architecture with a relatively small number of high-resolution ADCs is able to achieve a large fraction of the channel capacity of conventional architecture, while reduce the energy consumption considerably even compared with antenna selection, for both single-user and multiuser scenarios. In this letter, we derive an approximate analytical expression for the uplink achievable rate of a massive multiinput multioutput (MIMO) antenna system when finite precision analog-digital converters (ADCs) and the common maximal-ratio combining technique are used at the receivers. To obtain this expression, we treat quantization noise as an additive quantization noise model. Considering the obtained expression, we show that low-resolution ADCs lead to a decrease in the achievable rate but the performance loss can be compensated by increasing the number of receiving antennas. In addition, we investigate the relation between the number of antennas and the ADC resolution, as well as the power-scaling law. These discussions support the feasibility of equipping highly economical ADCs with low resolution in practical massive MIMO systems.