A Macro Cellular Wireless Network with Uniformly High User Throughputs

Traditional macro-cellular wireless networks are not capable of delivering even throughputs to all the users due to large variations in slow fading and inter-cell and inter-user interferences, and the throughputs for cell edge users are necessarily sacrificed to achieve an acceptable level of cell spectral efficiency. We show that this is not the case for large-scale antenna systems (LSAS, also known as Massive MIMO). Specifically, we show that by means of its superior beamforming and frequency response flattening capabilities, simple noncooperative uplink and downlink power controls can be devised for an LSAS macro-cellular wireless network to provide intra-cell equalized, multi-Mbps throughputs to all users. Compared with current LTE, a 64-antenna LSAS can provide cell edge throughputs with at least a ten-fold increase in the uplink and a significant gain in the downlink, and at the same time provide a total spectral efficiency per cell that quintuples in the uplink and triples in the downlink.