A Novel Non-Stationary Cylinder Model for Massive MIMO Air-To-Ground (A2G) Channels

In this paper, we propose a novel single-hop cylinder-based channel model for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) air-to-ground (A2G) communication systems. With employing a uniform planar array (UPA) at the ground station (GS), we first characterize the geometrical relationships between transmitter and receiver through vectors in detail. Then, to describe the spatial non-stationary properties of clusters along the UPA, we propose a novel scatterer update process, which keeps the number of visible scatterers of different antenna elements constant. It also solves the high spatial-correlation problem, which results from the survival probability of the scatterer not tending to zero with the increase of distance. Moreover, we discuss the impacts of the spatial non-stationary properties on channel statistical characteristics, i.e., the spatial correlation function. Finally, our numerical and simulation results show that compared with other models, our proposed channel model can capture the spatial non-stationary properties of massive MIMO A2G channels observed in channel measurements well.