Impact of non-ideal UE hardware on cell-free massive MIMO network with centralized operation

This paper investigates the impact of non-ideal user equipment (UE) hardware on a cell-free (CF) massive MIMO (mMIMO) network with centralized operation under spatially correlated channels. The minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) estimator can be derived with the help of the generic non-ideal UE hardware model. It is demonstrated that even if the effective signal-to-noise ratio approaches infinity, pilot contamination and imperfect hardware can cause a non-zero estimation error floor. After that, a lower bound is determined for the ergodic uplink capacity of the centralized CF mMIMO network under non-ideal UE hardware. Moreover, the optimal receive combining vector is obtained to maximize the uplink spectral efficiency (SE). The maximum ratio (MR) and regularized zero-forcing (RZF) combining schemes are offered as alternatives in light of the computational complexity of the MMSE receiver. Comparing the RZF to the MMSE scheme under different levels of hardware impairments, our findings indicate that the RZF receiver suffers a negligible loss in total SE. For MR combining, a novel closed-form uplink achievable SE expression is obtained based on the MMSE estimator and the use-and-then-forget bounding technique. This expression gives vital insights into the achievable uplink performance with UE hardware impairments. Besides, for various hardware impairment factors, the impact of pilot sequence length on average sum SE is disclosed for different receive combining schemes. To increase the overall SE of the max-min fairness scheme, a heuristic fractional power control scheme with UE hardware impairments is developed, which can essentially avoid sacrificing the SE of other UEs while maximizing the SE of the unluckiest UE in the whole network. Finally, our theoretical performance analysis and power control algorithm are validated by simulation results, and fundamental design guidelines are provided for selecting hardware satisfying the practical UE requirements.