Performance Analysis and Transmission Block Size Optimization for Massive MIMO Vehicular Network with Spatially and Temporally Correlated Channels

We investigate the effect of spatially and temporally correlated channels on the transmission performance of multicell multiuser massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) vehicular networks in generic nonisotropic scattering environments. A new channel model is established to evaluate the harmfulness of the nonisotropic-scattered Angle-of-Departure/Angle-of-Arrival (AoD/AoA) spread and the high mobility of users on the uplink transmission. We derive the expressions of achievable spectral efficiency (SE), taking into account the effects of Line-of-Sight propagation, channel aging, and pilot contamination. Specifically, two novel receive combining schemes, namely, the aging-aware maximum ratio combining and the aging-aware minimum-mean-square error combining, are presented to mitigate the SE decline caused by outdated channel state information. A low-complexity pilot assignment algorithm is proposed to suppress pilot contamination. We find that the quasi-static assumption of the channel may be unsafe for the system design of the vehicular networks even within a single transmission block period lasting from hundreds of microseconds to a few milliseconds. We observe that there exists an optimal block size Copt that maximizes area SE. Especially, Copt can be expressed as a function of movement speed, AoD spread, and AoA spread. Numerical results are presented to validate the efficacy of the proposed schemes and highlight the importance of correct performance evaluation for practical massive MIMO system designs.