m3MIMO: An 8×8 mmWave Multi-User MIMO Testbed for Wireless Research

In this paper, we present m3MIMO a mmWave fully-digital multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) testbed for advanced wireless research. m3MIMO operates in the 57-64 GHz frequency range and supports up to 1 GHz of bandwidth enabling large data multiplexing in the frequency domain through orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). The testbed features three custom-designed Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC-based Software Defined Radios (SDRs) empowered with the Pi-Radio fully digital transceivers. Two of these SDRs support eight transmit and receive streams each (8 × 8 MIMO), while the third SDR supports up to four channels. m3MIMO supports three different communication modes: (i) point-to-point (P2P) transmissions; (ii) single-user multi-input multi-output (SU-MIMO), where multiple streams are transmitted to a single end-device; and (iii) MU-MIMO, where two devices are simultaneously served by a single transmitter. To showcase the m3MIMO's versatility, we present two research use cases: tracking-based beamforming and mmWave-based sensing. We will open-source the m3MIMO code along with the relevant use-case datasets, facilitating further analysis1.