Method and device for virtual port mapping for massive MIMO

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11528062-B2
Application number	US-201817047501-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 18, 2018
Priority date	Apr 18, 2018
Publication date	Dec 13, 2022
Grant date	Dec 13, 2022

Abstract

The present disclosure aims to provide a method and device for virtual port mapping of massive MIMO. The present disclosure maps one or more transceiver units to a virtual port by performing hybrid beamforming for at least one transceiver unit in massive MIMO, and then performs digital precoding based on the virtual port. Compared with the prior art, the present disclosure is an adaptive technology adapted to the existing architecture; the present disclosure is based on virtual port mapping technology, which reduces the number of ports required for baseband processing, thus simplifying baseband processing, and furthermore, the present disclosure does not reduce the number of antenna elements utilized; the present disclosure can utilize digital precoding in hybrid beamforming to perform energy efficiency management; the present disclosure can be used more flexibly as a medium-term beamforming scheme in different frequency domain and time domain, while traditional analog beamforming is a long-term/semi-static beamforming scheme in time domain.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for virtual port mapping of a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), the massive MIMO including a plurality of transceiver units, wherein the method comprises:
mapping at least one transceiver unit of the plurality of transceiver units in the massive MIMO to a virtual port through hybrid beamforming, the hybrid beamforming including performing analog beamforming on the at least one transceiver unit; and
performing digital precoding based on the virtual port on the at least one transceiver unit after the analog beamforming; and
determining one or more virtual port modes for the massive MIMO according to user distribution of user equipment devices of at least one cell served by the massive MIMO, wherein
the one or more virtual port modes comprising a total number of virtual ports corresponding to the massive MIMO, a total number of transceiver units included in each virtual port, and position information of the plurality of transceiver units among antenna arrays included in the massive MIMO, and
the mapping the at least one transceiver unit to the virtual port further comprises,
mapping, based on the virtual port mode, the at least one transceiver unit in the massive MIMO to the virtual port corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit in the virtual port mode through the hybrid beamforming.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises:
determining hybrid beamforming weight corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit in the massive MIMO; and
the mapping the at least one transceiver unit to the virtual port further comprises,
mapping the at least one transceiver unit to the virtual port through the hybrid beamforming according to the hybrid beamforming weight.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein the hybrid beamforming weight comprises at least one analog beamforming weight corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit and/or at least one digital precoding weight corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit.

4. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the determining one or more virtual port modes for the massive MIMO comprises:
determining one or more candidate virtual port modes for the massive MIMO according to a potential user distribution of the user equipment devices of the cell served by the massive MIMO, wherein the one or more candidate virtual port modes comprise the total number of virtual ports corresponding to the massive MIMO, the total number of transceiver units included in each virtual port, and the position information of the plurality of transceiver units among the antenna arrays; and
determining the one or more candidate virtual port modes as the virtual port mode corresponding to the massive MIMO according to a current time domain and/or frequency domain demand information of the cell served by the massive MIMO.

5. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer readable instructions stored therein which, when executed by one or more devices, causes the one or more devices to perform the method according to claim 1 .

6. A computer device, the computer device comprising:
one or more processors;
a memory configured to store one or more computer programs; and
the one or more computer programs, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to implement the method according to claim 1 .

7. A mapping device for virtual port mapping of a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), the massive MIMO including a plurality of transceiver units, wherein the mapping device comprises:
memory having computer readable instructions stored thereon; and
at least one processor configured to execute the computer readable instructions to cause the mapping device to,
map at least one transceiver unit of the plurality of transceiver units in the massive MIMO to a virtual port through hybrid beamforming, the hybrid beamforming including performing analog beamforming on the at least one transceiver unit;
perform digital precoding based on the virtual port on the at least one transceiver unit after the analog beamforming; and
determine one or more virtual port modes for the massive MIMO according to user distribution of user equipment devices of at least one cell served by the massive MIMO, wherein
the one or more virtual port modes are determined based on a total number of virtual ports corresponding to the massive MIMO, a total number of transceiver units in each virtual port, and position information of the plurality of transceiver units among antenna arrays included in the massive MIMO, and
the mapping the at least one transceiver unit to the virtual port further comprises,
mapping, based on the virtual port mode, the at least one transceiver unit in the massive MIMO to the virtual port corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit in the virtual port mode through the hybrid beamforming.

8. The mapping device according to claim 7 , wherein the mapping device is further caused to:
determine hybrid beamforming weight corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit in the massive MIMO; and
perform the mapping the at least one transceiver unit to the virtual port by,
mapping the at least one transceiver unit to the virtual port through hybrid beamforming according to the hybrid beamforming weight.

9. The mapping device according to claim 8 , wherein the hybrid beamforming weight comprises at least one analog beamforming weight corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit and/or at least one digital precoding weight corresponding to the at least one transceiver unit.

10. The mapping device according to claim 7 , wherein the mapping device is further caused to perform the determining the one or more virtual port modes for the massive MIMO by:
determining one or more candidate virtual port modes for the massive MIMO according to a potential user distribution of the user equipment devices of the cell served by the massive MIMO, wherein the one or more candidate virtual port modes are determined based on the total number of virtual ports corresponding to the massive MIMO, the total number of transceiver units included in each virtual port, and the position information of the plurality of transceiver units among the antenna arrays; and
determining the one or more candidate virtual port modes as the virtual port mode corresponding to the massive MIMO according to a current time domain and/or frequency domain demand information of the cell served by the massive MIMO.

11. A base station for virtual port mapping of massive MIMO, wherein the base station comprises the mapping device according to claim 7 .

Assignees

• Nokia Shanghai Bell Co Ltd

Inventors

• Zhao Yan
• Sun Huan
• Liu Hao

Classifications

• H04W72/51

  based on terminal or device properties · CPC title

• Y02D30/70

  in wireless communication networks · CPC title

• H04W72/044

  based on the type of the allocated resource · CPC title

• H04B7/0452 Primary

  Multi-user MIMO systems · CPC title

• H04B7/0617 Primary

  for beam forming · CPC title