On the Mutual Orthogonality of Millimeter-wave

Massive MIMO Channels

Sinh Le Hong Nguyen1 , Katsuyuki Haneda1 , Jan Jarvelainen1 , Aki Karttunen1 , and Jyri Putkonen2
1
Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering, Espoo, Finland, sinh.nguyen@aalto.fi
2
Nokia, Espoo, Finland, jyri.putkonen@nsn.com

AbstractMutual orthogonal user channels in multiuser (MU)-
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are desirable
and can be approximately obtained under independent and
identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading assumption with
a very large number of base station antennas. However, it
has been shown that at millimeter-wave (mmW) frequencies,
this assumption is not valid due to the limited number of
multipath components and spatial channel correlation. In this
paper, we examine the mutual orthogonality of a realistic 60-
GHz outdoor propagation channel with practical large antenna
arrays, and determine the factors deciding it based on the channel
data generated by means of deterministic field prediction. The
results obtained reveal relationships between mutual orthogonal-
ity, inter-user distance, number of active users, transmit array
dimensions, and downlink system capacity at 60-GHz band,
which are useful for designing future mmW massive MU-MIMO
systems.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Millimeter-wave (mmW) massive multiple-input multiple-
output (MIMO) is a key technology for the upcoming 5G
communication networks, as this combination enjoys both
huge signal bandwidth at mmW frequencies and spatial mul-
tiplexing capability of large antenna arrays. One of the fun-
damental features that makes the massive MIMO attractive
is the asymptotic pairwise orthogonality between the channel
vectors under identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading
assumption. This feature allows multiple data streams spatially
multiplexed at a base station to be transmitted to multiple user
terminals simultaneously with just simple and linear precoding
techniques. The mutual orthogonal channels also provide the
optimal performance in terms of transmit power consumption
or sum-rate channel capacity [1].
When it comes to realistic design of multiuser (MU)-MIMO
systems operating at mmW frequencies, however, many prac-
tical considerations need to be accounted for to achieve
such desirable performances. One of the major issues is that
the number of independent multipath components (MPCs) at
mmW frequencies is typically limited, and that the vector
channels are not i.i.d. Rayleigh but rather correlated fading
[2]. As a result, making the number of antennas very large
does not necessarily guarantee orthogonal channels between
the users, especially when the users are in close proximity.
Another issue is that the number of Tx antennas in reality is
finite as it is bounded by the compact form of the antenna array
size. Increasing the number of Tx antennas without increasing
the array dimensions creates the mutual antenna coupling or
antenna correlation. Since neither the channels are i.i.d. nor
the number of Tx antennas is infinite or made very large, the
mutual orthogonal condition can not be perfectly satisfied in
reality, and hence the optimal system performance can not be
always achieved.
In this paper, we study the non-orthogonality of the mmW
massive MIMO channel under a realistic outdoor propagation
environment, and analyze the parameters that decide the spatial
correlation and the overall system performance. They include
the Tx antenna array size and antenna number, the inter-user
distance between two users, and the number of users that could
be simultaneously active/served. The realistic channel data for
this study is based on directional channel measurements at 60
GHz in an open square in downtown Helsinki, Finland (Fig. 1)
and a deterministic field prediction tool. The results obtained
from this work are useful for designing future mmW MU-
MIMO systems especially in urban outdoor propagation envi-
ronments, in which multiple antenna design, transmit/receive
beamforming, and multiuser scheduling are major techniques
that need to be considered.
II. C HANNEL G ENERATION BY M EANS OF
D ETERMINISTIC F IELD P REDICTION
A. Point cloud-based channel propagation prediction
Fig. 1. Photo of the measurement location in Narinkkatori, Helsinki, Finland.
In order to obtain the channel data for the environment of
interest, we use a point cloud-based propagation prediction
method calibrated with measured channel data. The prop-
agation prediction method utilizes laser scanning to obtain
accurate descriptions of the propagation environments in the
form of a point cloud [3]. The prediction method relies on
a single-lobe directive scattering mode [4] to calculate the
backscattering from each point in the point cloud, and the
contributions coming from distinct points are combined to give

978-1-4799-8088-8/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

 Fig. 2. Illustration of the laser scanned point cloud and the simulated 2 Tx locations and 648 Rx locations.

the total field. In particular, we assume that the field consists where denotes the Kronecker product, and aH and aV are
of a LOS path along with single-bounce scattering from the the phase response vectors for horizontal and vertical linear
point cloud. The effect of shadowing caused by blocking arrays to path l in the form
objects in the environment is taken into account by assuming
1
that points found inside the Fresnel zone induces additional D
1
j2 sin cos
attenuation to a path [5]. The point cloud obtained from the e
aH (, ) = .. ,
laser scans for the open square is illustrated in Fig. 2. The Lk .
square is approximately 100100m2 , surrounded by buildings ej2
(N 1)D
sin cos
on four sides. In addition to the buildings and the ground, the
propagation environment is affected by lamp posts and people. 1
j2 D cos (N 1)D
T
aV () = 1e ej2 cos ,
The people cause the line-of-sight (LOS) to be obstructed, i.e., Lk
obstructed-line-of-sight (OLOS) in some places. respectively. In (1), k denotes the large-scale fading coeffi-
The scattering model contains two parameters, a scattering cient accounting for path loss and shadowing of channel hk ,
coefficient S and a scattering lobe width R , which relate gkl CN (0, 1) denotes the complex amplitude of path l of
to the material properties of the local surface. Since it is user k, (kl , kl ) are the elevation and azimuth angles of ar-
not feasible to obtain material parameter values for all local rival at Tx of path l originating from user k, and Lk is the total
surfaces, we calibrate S and R such that the predicted number of MPCs from user k to the Tx. kl [/2, /2]
and measured root-mean-square (rms) delay spread agree as is the uniformly distributed random phase for the the small-
well as possible using the same parameter values for all scale fading of different MPCs, and independent to the user
points in the prediction of a single channel. In the open and MPC indices.
square, the scattering model parameters were found to be
S = 1.0, R = 50. The propagation paths are identified as the TABLE I
C ORRELATION DISTANCE ( IN METERS ) OF LARGE - SCALE PARAMETERS
peaks in the power delay profile (PDP). Amplitude, delay, and
azimuth and elevation angles are obtained for each multipath
LS parameter LOS OLOS
for both the Tx as well as for the Rx.
DS 1.3 1.4
B. Massive MU-MIMO channel generation ASD 23 3.2
ASA 1 8.1
To generate the MU-MIMO channel, an N N uniform
ESD 15 1.8
planar array (UPA) is created at each Tx location. Each UPA
ESA 17 0.8
is a horizontal planar of M = N 2 half-wave vertical dipoles
SF 7.8 3.6
with D antenna spacing in both dimensions. The planar array
K 7.9 N/A
is of size (N 1)D (N 1)D at each Tx. For routes 1-4,
the broadside of the Tx planar array points to 135 (see Fig.
1). For routes 5-8, the broadside of the Tx planar array points By (1) we assume the plane wavefront and the wide-sense
to 315 . Each route has 81 Rx locations. For the simplicity, stationary (WSS) of the channel over the Tx antenna array. By
each Rx is assumed to have only one omni-directional antenna. assuming that, all of Lk propagation paths for a particular user
Using the classical multipath model, the M 1 channel vector k to the Tx are subject to the same large-scale fading across
between a Tx and Rx k on a route is given by all Tx antennas. All cluster/scatterer parameters including path
Lk loss (PL) and shadow fading (SF), azimuth and elevation
 
hk = k ejkl gkl aH (kl , kl ) aV (kl ), (1) spreads of departure and arrival (ASD, ASA, ESD, and ESA),
l=1 and K-factor do not vary along the antenna locations on the
 MPCs of Tx1Rx10 and Tx1Rx30 links on route 3
Tx1
Rx30
10
5
Rx10
0 4
5 0
10
8
10
15 12
14
16
Fig. 3. Visual comparison of MPCs in the open square scenario with (left) no common scatter when two users are well separated, and (right) three common
scatterers when two users are 0.8 m spaced.
array axes. These assumptions are reasonable as long as the
array dimensions are smaller than the correlation distance of
the large-scale parameters obtained from point cloud channel
data as in Table I, and when the Tx-Rx link distance is in the
far-field range. The following results and analysis are applied
for the OLOS cases, which have the shortest correlation
distance of 0.8 m considering all the large-scale parameters.
III. M UTUAL O RTHOGONALITY OF MU-MIMO
P ROPAGATION C HANNEL
Let H = [h1 h2 . . . hK ] denote the M K composite
MU-MIMO channel matrix. Mutual orthogonal channel re-
quires every pair of column vectors of H satisfies
hH
i hj = 0 for all i = j.
Under the i.i.d. Rayleigh channels assumption (i.e., the NLOS
rich scattering environment), hk CN (0, k IM ), condition
(2) is asymptotically achieved with very large Tx antenna
array, by the law of large numbers
1 H
h hj 0 as M for i = j. (3)
M i
Denote (H) be the condition number of H, which is defined
as the ratio between the largest singular value max and
smallest singular value min of H, i.e.,
max
(H) = . is created using the MF precoder. In the next section, we
min
If all the user channel vectors are normalized to have the same
norm, e.g. hk 2 = M , the power imbalance due to large-
scale fading between the user channels is removed, and the
condition number of the i.i.d. MU-MIMO channels is equal to
1. This ideal propagation condition provides optimal perfor-
mance for MU-MIMO channels: downlink spatial streaming
can achieve maximum sum-rate, by using only simple linear
precoding methods at Tx such as MF to decompose the
channel to multiple independent spatial interference-free sub-
channels.
The mutual orthogonal condition, however, can not be
satisfied in reality, especially in our interested mmW outdoor
propagation channel, for practical reasons previously discussed
including spatial correlation and compact form of the Tx
arrays. The spatial correlation between user channel vectors
occurs in our experiments where the users are close to each
MPCs of Tx1Rx50 and Tx1Rx57 links on route 3
Common scatterers Tx1
Rx50
Rx57
0
5
0
2
5
2 0
4
6 10 5
10
15 15
20
other and hence their MPCs often belong to the same cluster
of scatters. In other cases, spatial correlation is also introduced
by common scatterers (walls in street canyon, high buildings
in city center, etc.) seen by different users even when they are
not well co-located [6], [7]. Fig. 3 shows the MPCs obtained
from point cloud channel data for two scenarios of no common
scatterer and three common scatterers when the inter-user
distance are 8 m and 2.8 m, respectively.
Beside the the richness of the scattering and the distribu-
tion of the scatterers in the propagation environment, other
factors that affect the mutual orthogonality of H include the
number of Tx antennas and the antenna spacing, and the inter-
user distance. One way to measure the amount of lack of
orthogonality or spatial correlation is examining the condition
(2) number (H) that quantifies the spread in magnitude of the
singular values of H. The smaller and closer to 1 the condition
number is, the better suited the channel is to support spatial
multiplexing and the better performance of the precoder that
results in higher capacity. When considering only two users,
the pairwise orthogonality between two channel vectors hi and
hj can be measured by the normalized scalar product
|hH
i hj | 1 H
ij = = |h hj |. (4)
hi hj M i
The smaller and closer to zero this product is, the smaller
the downlink inter-user interference between user i and j
analyze the impact of mutual orthogonality on the downlink
capacity of the MU-MIMO channels associated with MF and
ZF precoders, respectively.
IV. I MPACTS OF MUTUAL ORTHOGONALITY ON DOWNLINK
CHANNEL CAPACITY
Consider the above described MU-MIMO system operating
under the narrow-band channel. With the assumptions of time-
division duplexing (TDD) and channel reciprocity, the received
signal at user k is given by

yk = hTk x + nk = hTk wk sk + hTk wj sj + nk , (5)
j=k
where nk is the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at
user k, nk CN (0, 2 ). In (5), s CK is the normalized
information vector of length K satisfying E{ssH } = IK . x
is the transmit (precoded) vector of length M , related to s by zero. In this case, is also the receive energy at each user since
the precoding matrix W CM K as x = Ws. the MU-MIMO channel can be decomposed as K independent
Assuming that the CSI is perfectly known at the Tx, then channels as (5) becomes
the average achievable sum-rate of all K user is given by
yk = sk + nk .
K

R= E{log2 (1 + k )}, The SINR has the same value of k = / 2 = M P/(K 2 )
k=1 across all the users, and the average achievable sum-rate in
where k is the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) this ideal scenario using ZF precoding is
 
at user k, computed as Riid, ZF = KE log2 (1 + 2 )

|hTk wk |2 MP
k =  T 2 2
. (6)
j=k |hk wj | +
The precoding matrix W is designed to maximize certain per-
formance metric of MU-MIMO system. As we are interested
in system capacity performance, two sub-optimal but more
practical linear precoding methods are considered: matched
filtering (MF) and zero-forcing (ZF).
A. Matched filtering (MF)
MF is the simplest and least complex precoding technique,
in which each precoding vector wk is designed to maximize
the intended users receive energy. That is,
wk = pk hk / hTk ,
K log2 (1 + ) as M ,
K 2
which is equal to the asymptotic sum-rate Riid, ZF (The two
precoders are identical when all columns of H are mutually
orthogonal).
In our practical scenario, however, the vector channels are
not always perfectly mutually orthogonal, neither uncorrelated.
The presence of strong spatial correlation induces situations
when the channel is ill-conditioned, reducing or the SNR at
the users. In those case, a loss in the receive SNR and hence
the sum-rate with respect to i.i.d. channels.
V. N UMERICAL R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
K In the simulation, for each experiment 500 small-scale
where pk is the power allocated to user k, k=1 pk = P , the channel realizations for each Tx-Rx pair are generated for
total power available at the Tx. With this notation, the received a total of 648 pairs at different Tx and Rx locations. Our
SINR at user k in (6) becomes first interest is how the amount of correlation of the two user
pk channel vectors varies along the inter-user distance and the Tx
k =  2 p + 2 /M .

j=k kj j antenna array size under the realistic propagation environment.
In this method, since we aim to maximize the received signal Fig. 4 shows the average number of common scatters (left)
power solely, the inter-user interference is not accounted for and the average correlation coefficient (right) over all Tx-
and hence there is some SNR loss in the case of non- Rx pairs of all 8 routes of the experiment versus the inter-
orthogonal channels (kj = 0) as compared to asymptotically user distance. The antenna spacing of UPA at each Tx is
orthogonal ones (i.d.d. channels with very large M ). The D = 2, so the largest array dimensions are 38 38
asymptotic sum-rate for i.i.d. channels is or approximately 0.20.2 m2 . It can be observed the clear
dependency of the number of common cluster and spatial
MP channel correlation with respect to the inter-user distance.
Riid, ZF K log2 (1 + ) as M ,
K 2 When the number of Tx antennas exceeds 1616, increasing it
if all the users are allocated the same power pk = P/K. does not necessarily decrease the spatial correlation by much.
We can also observe that on the average, with 1010 UPA
B. Zero-forcing (ZF) and D = 2 the correlation becomes lower than 0.1 when the
In ZF precoding, the precoding matrix at the Tx is the inter-user distance is greater than 16 m (approximately twice
pseudo-inverse of the downlink channel matrix of OLOS shadowing correlation distance).


1
W = HT = H HT H , 8 1
Correlation coefficient

6x6 array
common scatterers

where is the normalization parameter that guarantees 10x10 array

Average no. of

6
16x16 array
the average total transmit power of P , i.e., E{ x 2 } = 20x20 array
E{tr(WH W)} = P. For each random channel realization, 4 0.5

the normalization is computed as 2


1 
= P/E tr HT H . (7) 0 0
0 10 20 30 0 10 20 30
Interuser distance (m) Interuser distance (m)
In the ideal scenario of i.i.d channels, all the user channel vec-
tors are mutually orthogonal at the limit of infinite number of Fig. 4. Average number of common scatterers (left) and correlation
Tx antennas, and hence the inter-user interference approaches coefficient with D = 2 (right) over all routes versus inter-user distance.
 Fig. 5 shows the scatter plot of average achievable sum-rate 1
of 2 users when Tx is equipped with 10 10 UPA, D = 2,
versus the inter-user distance. The total power P = 10 dB
0.8
and noise power 2 = 1/10 dB (high SNR regime). It can
be seen that the larger distance between the two users, due to
the decreasing of the correlation, the closer of sum-rate of the 0.6

CDF
D = 0.5
MF precoder to that of the ZF precoder. When this distance
is larger than 16 m, the average sum-rate (not shown here) of 0.4 4 users
ZF achieve 80% of the asymptotic i.i.d. sum-capacity. 8 users
0.2 12 users
16 users
20
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Sumrate (bits/channel use)

Condition number
15
Fig. 6. C.d.f. of condition number of H for different number of users, 1010
UPA with D = 0.5 at Tx.
10
1
i.i.d
5 ZF
MF 0.8

0 0.6
0 10 20 30
CDF
Interuser distance (m)
ZF, K = 4
0.4 MF, K = 4
Fig. 5. Sum-rate versus inter-user distance, 1010 UPA with D = 2, i.i.d., K = 4
P = 10 dB, 2 = 1/10 dB. ZF, K = 16
0.2 MF, K = 16
When K 2, each Tx with a 10 10 UPA with D = 0.5 i.i.d., K = 16

chooses to serve 4Kr Rxs from 4 routes (Kr Rx locations with 0

a maximum separation on each route). Fig. 6 shows the cumu-
lative distribution function (CDF) of the condition number of
H for K = {4, 8, 12, 16} users. It can be seen that the well-
conditioned 4-user channel is capable of supporting 4 parallel
paths for spatial multiplexing. The channel becomes more ill-
conditioned as K increases, suggesting that the transmission
of higher numbers of spatial streams is less feasible. Indeed, it
can be observed from Fig. 7 that at P = 5 dB and 2 = 1, the
sum-rate with 4 users using MF is close to that using ZF and
of i.i.d. case, since the channel matrix is nearly orthogonal.
At K = 16, both ZF and MF precoders have far smaller sum-
capacity as compared to the i.i.d. case, since the channel now
is ill-conditioned indicated by large condition number (H).
In this low SNR regime, MF performs poorly as the signal
energy in
(7) at each
1 user is low, due to the small singular
values of HT H . [3] J. Jarvelainen and K. Haneda, Sixty gigahertz indoor radio wave prop-
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
We have studied the mutual orthogonality of mmW massive
MU-MIMO channels and its impact to the spatial multiplexing
capability. The results obtained have invalidated the i.i.d. chan-
nels assumption as well as the asymptotic mutual orthogonal
channels of mmW massive MU-MIMO. The dependency of
the channel mutual orthogonality and system capacity on
the inter-user distance, number of active users, and antenna
array dimensions at 60-GHz has also been analyzed. This
study has revealed that the number of active users in mmW
0 20 40 60 80
Sumrate (bits/channel use)
Fig. 7. C.d.f. of sum-rate for different number of users, Tx has 1010 UPA
with D = 2, P = 5 dB, 2 = 1.
should be small as compared to microwave systems. The users
should also be well-separated, in a range of at least two times
of correlation distance of shadowing, for an efficient spatial
multiplexing with linear processing precoders.
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