From Antenna Abundance to Antenna Intelligence in 6G Gigantic MIMO Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Björnson, Emil, Irshad, Amna, Demir, Özlem Tugfe, de Abreu, Giuseppe Thadeu Freitas, Kosasih, Alva, Petrov, Vitaly
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Björnson, Emil
Irshad, Amna
Demir, Özlem Tugfe
de Abreu, Giuseppe Thadeu Freitas
Kosasih, Alva
Petrov, Vitaly
author_facet Björnson, Emil
Irshad, Amna
Demir, Özlem Tugfe
de Abreu, Giuseppe Thadeu Freitas
Kosasih, Alva
Petrov, Vitaly
contents Current cellular systems achieve high spectral efficiency through Massive MIMO, which leverages an abundance of antennas to create favorable propagation conditions for multiuser spatial multiplexing. Looking towards future networks, the extrapolation of this paradigm leads to systems with many hundreds of antennas per base station, raising concerns regarding hardware complexity, cost, and power consumption. This article suggests more intelligent array designs that reduce the need for excessive antenna numbers. We revisit classical uniform array design principles and explain how their uniform spatial sampling leads to unnecessary redundancies in practical deployment scenarios. By exploiting non-uniform sparse arrays with site-specific antenna placements -- based on either pre-optimized irregular arrays or real-time movable antennas -- we demonstrate how superior multiuser MIMO performance can be achieved with far fewer antennas. These principles are inspired by previous works on wireless localization. We explain and demonstrate numerically how these concepts can be adapted for communications to improve the average sum rate and similar metrics. The results suggest a paradigm shift for future antenna array design, where antenna intelligence replaces sheer antenna count. This opens new opportunities for efficient, adaptable, and sustainable Gigantic MIMO systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_08326
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Antenna Abundance to Antenna Intelligence in 6G Gigantic MIMO Systems
Björnson, Emil
Irshad, Amna
Demir, Özlem Tugfe
de Abreu, Giuseppe Thadeu Freitas
Kosasih, Alva
Petrov, Vitaly
Information Theory
Signal Processing
Current cellular systems achieve high spectral efficiency through Massive MIMO, which leverages an abundance of antennas to create favorable propagation conditions for multiuser spatial multiplexing. Looking towards future networks, the extrapolation of this paradigm leads to systems with many hundreds of antennas per base station, raising concerns regarding hardware complexity, cost, and power consumption. This article suggests more intelligent array designs that reduce the need for excessive antenna numbers. We revisit classical uniform array design principles and explain how their uniform spatial sampling leads to unnecessary redundancies in practical deployment scenarios. By exploiting non-uniform sparse arrays with site-specific antenna placements -- based on either pre-optimized irregular arrays or real-time movable antennas -- we demonstrate how superior multiuser MIMO performance can be achieved with far fewer antennas. These principles are inspired by previous works on wireless localization. We explain and demonstrate numerically how these concepts can be adapted for communications to improve the average sum rate and similar metrics. The results suggest a paradigm shift for future antenna array design, where antenna intelligence replaces sheer antenna count. This opens new opportunities for efficient, adaptable, and sustainable Gigantic MIMO systems.
title From Antenna Abundance to Antenna Intelligence in 6G Gigantic MIMO Systems
topic Information Theory
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08326