Downlink Achievable Rate Analysis in Massive MIMO Systems With One-Bit DACs

Abstract

In this letter, we investigate the downlink performance of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems where the base station is equipped with one-bit analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converters (ADC/DACs). We assume that the base station employs the linear minimum mean-squared-error channel estimator and treats the channel estimate as the true channel to precode the data symbols. We derive an expression for the downlink achievable rate for matched-filter precoding. A detailed analysis of the resulting power efficiency is pursued using our expression of the achievable rate. Numerical results are presented to verify our analysis. In particular, it is shown that, compared with conventional massive MIMO systems, the performance loss in one-bit massive MIMO systems can be compensated for by deploying approximately 2.5 times more antennas at the BS.