Sectoring in Multi-cell Massive MIMO Systems
29 October 2017
In this report we study the potential effects of sectoring in multi-cell multi-user massive MIMO (massive MIMO) systems, in which a large number of base station antennas serve a much smaller (tens or hundreds of times smaller) number of users in each cell. We discuss how sectoring leads to a power gain as a result of deploying directional antenna elements at each base station. Even though sectoring does not diminish the interference experienced by users in conventional cellular networks, we show that sectoring can be effective in reducing the effect of "pilot contamination", an interference source that appears in multi-cell massive MIMO networks with increasing array sizes. Our simulations suggest that the power gain and interference reduction achieved by sectoring can lead to substantial improvement in user downlink transmission rates in massive MIMO systems.
