Ray Launching Based Super-Resolution Method for Antenna Elements of Massive MIMO Scenario

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is considered as a key technology in the sixth generation (6 G) communication systems, bringing unique channel characteristics such as spherical wavefront and spatial non-stationarity effects. In this paper, we propose a super-resolution ray launching (SRRL) method to efficiently and accurately model the channel characteristics of massive MIMO scenarios. SR-RL simplifies simulations by performing RL only on the selected antenna elements based on the coherence distance and ignoring other elements. Ray paths traced from the selected elements are distributed to the ignored elements using the reflecting planes and possible obstacles along the ray trajectory. The obtained ray paths of both selected and ignored elements are recorded in a table, revealing a pattern of changes in multipath components across the antenna array. Compared to traditional brute-force methods, SR-RL can reduce computational time significantly, and captures spherical wavefront and spatial non-stationarity effects without sacrificing accuracy.