Noncoherent Detection for an EM-Lens-Enabled Massive MIMO System

Inhalt:
In multi-user massive MIMO uplink scenarios, noncoherent detection schemes are an attractive low-complexity alternative to channel-estimation-based equalization. Since phase information is not available at the receiver, the spatial separation of the induced power is used to resolve the different users. In case of no spatial separation, noncoherent detection is not possible. In this paper, we employ antenna arrays where an electromagnetic lens is placed in front of the antenna elements to focus the induced power to a smaller footprint. This results in a spatial separation required for noncoherent detection. The performance of the EM-lens-enabled system is assessed by means of numerical simulations.