For Better or Worse: The Impact of Shadow Fading on the Capacity of Large MIMO Networks

This paper explore the impact of shadow fading in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. More specifically, we focus on the spectral efficiency of MIMO large networks. We consider a MIMO ad-hoc network where, L trans mitter/receiver pairs communicate independent information over the same bandwidth, simultaneously. We examine the asymptotic capacity of the considered system, i.e., as L rarr infin. We show that although shadow fading causes a reduction in network capacity, our previous result concerning the optimality of beamforming still holds. We also investigate the effect of shadowing on average degrees of freedom (ADOF) of the MIMO links.