Abstract

Multi-user multiple-input multiple-output theory predicts manyfold capacity gains by leveraging many antennas on wireless base stations to serve multiple clients simultaneously through multi-user beamforming (MUBF). However, realizing a base station with a large number antennas is non-trivial, and has yet to be achieved in the real-world. We present the design, realization, and evaluation of Argos, the first reported base station architecture that is capable of serving many terminals simultaneously through MUBF with a large number of antennas (M >> 10). Designed for extreme flexibility and scalability, Argos exploits hierarchical and modular design principles, properly partitions baseband processing, and holistically considers real-time requirements of MUBF. Argos employs a novel, completely distributed, beamforming technique, as well as an internal calibration procedure to enable implicit beamforming with channel estimation cost independent of the number of base station antennas. We report an Argos prototype with 64 antennas and capable of serving 15 clients simultaneously. We experimentally demonstrate that by scaling from 1 to 64 antennas the prototype can achieve up to 6.7 fold capacity gains while using a mere 1/64th of the transmission power.

Keywords

BeamformingComputer scienceBase stationBasebandScalabilityModular designFlexibility (engineering)Transmission (telecommunications)WirelessChannel (broadcasting)Electronic engineeringReal-time computingComputer networkTelecommunicationsEngineeringBandwidth (computing)

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Publication Info

Year
2012
Type
article
Pages
53-64
Citations
643
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Clayton Shepard, Hang Yu, Narendra Anand et al. (2012). Argos. , 53-64. https://doi.org/10.1145/2348543.2348553

Identifiers

DOI
10.1145/2348543.2348553