Effect of NR-LDPC Codes on the Uplink Massive MIMO

Future wireless communication technologies and the current fifth generation (5G) mobile communication system will need to provide greater coverage, spectral efficiency and reliability with reduced data traffic congestion. However, in wireless communication, reaching these objectives presents difficulties. Therefore, using only massive multiple-input multiple-output (M-MIMO) technology will not be sufficient to meet the continuously increasing demand, guarantee high reliability and avoid data traffic congestion. In this paper, the performance of M-MIMO system concatenated with channel coding using the low-density parity-check codes described in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specification TS 38.212 is investigated. The performance is evaluated and comparisons are made in terms of bit error rate (BER) as a function of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) for different linear receivers: maximal ratio combiner (MRC), zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square errors (MMSE). In addition, a comparison for the coded and uncoded M-MIMO in the uplink (UL) using these receivers are made. MMSE and ZF showed the best simulation results across all scenarios; however, MRC needed a notably greater number of antenna elements to match their performance.