A Novel Massive MIMO Beam Domain Channel Model

A novel beam domain channel model (BDCM) for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems has been proposed in this paper. The near-field effect and spherical wavefront are firstly assumed in the proposed model, which is different from the conventional BDCM for MIMO based on the far-field effect and plane wavefront assumption. The proposed novel BDCM is the transformation of an existing geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) from the antenna domain into beam domain. The space-time non-stationarity is also modeled in the novel BDCM. Moreover, the comparison of computational complexity for both models is studied. Based on the numerical analysis, comparison of cluster-level statistical properties between the proposed BDCM and existing GBSM has shown that there exists little difference in the space, time, and frequency correlation properties for two models. Also, based on the simulation, coherence bandwidths of the two models in different scenarios are almost the same. The computational complexity of the novel BDCM is much lower than the existing GBSM. It can be observed that the proposed novel BDCM has similar statistical properties to the existing GBSM at the clusterlevel. The proposed BDCM has less complexity and is therefore more convenient for information theory and signal processing research than the conventional GBSMs.