# A High-Level Comparison of Recent Technologies for Massive MIMO Architectures Source: [A High-Level Comparison of Recent Technologies for Massive MIMO Architectures]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-25T16:12:41.161Z Authors: Hans Rosenberger, Bernhard G\\"ade, Ali Bereyhi, Doaa Ahmed, Vahid Jamali, Ralf R. M\\"uller, Georg Fischer, Gaoning He, M\\'erouane Debbah Published: 2022-12-22T16:25:25.000Z ## Abstract Since the introduction of massive MIMO (mMIMO), the design of a transceiver with feasible complexity has been a challenging problem. Initially, it was believed that the main issue in this respect is the overall RF-cost. However, as mMIMO is becoming more and more a key technology for future wireless networks, it is realized, that the RF-cost is only one of many implementational challenges and design trade-offs. In this paper, we present, analyze and compare various novel mMIMO architectures, considering recent emerging technologies such as intelligent surface-assisted and Rotman lens based architectures. These are compared to the conventional fully digital (FD) and hybrid analog-digital beamforming (HADB) approaches. To enable a fair comparison, we account for various hardware imperfections and losses and utilize a novel, universal algorithm for signal precoding. Based on our thorough investigations, we draw a generic efficiency to quality trade-off for various mMIMO architectures. We find that in a typical cellular communication setting the reflect/transmit array based architectures sketch the best overall trade-off. Further, we show that in a qualitative ranking the power efficiency of the considered architectures is independent of the frequency range. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()