Fulfilling the promise of massive MIMO with 2D active antenna array

In this paper, we study practical 2-Dimensional (2D) active antenna array configurations for Massive MIMO systems and evaluate the system-level performance with the form factor at the base stations operating in cellular frequency band. To this end, we develop a 3-Dimensional Spatial Channel Model (3D SCM) to facilitate accurate performance evaluation and to build insights for system design. System-level simulation is conducted for various 2D antenna array configurations (8Hx8V, 8Hx4V) by using the 3D SCM developed. Simulation results show that 2-5 times cell average throughput gain and 1.5-9 times cell edge throughput gain can be achieved compared to the 4G LTE system.