Massive MIMO is the currently most compelling sub-6 GHz wireless access technology for 5G.

Since its inception

about a decade ago, it has evolved from a wild “academic” idea to one of the hottest research topics in the wireless
communications community, as well as a main work item in 5G standardization.

Massive MIMO is seen as a key technology to delivering mobile 5G

Massive multiple-input, multiple-output, or massive MIMO, is an extension of MIMO, which essentially groups
together antennas at the transmitter and receiver to provide better throughput and better spectrum
efficiency. This method’s ability to multiply the capacity of the antenna links has made it an essential
element of wireless standards including 802.11n (Wi-FI), 802.11ac (Wi-Fi), HSPA+, WiMAX and LTE.

Moving from MIMO to massive MIMO, according to IEEE, involves making “a clean break with current practice
through the use of a large excess of service antennas over active terminals and time-division duplex operation. Extra
antennas help by focusing energy into ever smaller regions of space to bring huge improvements in throughput and
radiated energy efficiency.” The group calls out other benefits including cheaper parts, lower latency, “simplification of
the MAC layer, and robustness against intentional jamming.”
Sprint, along with vendor partner Nokia, made a splash at Mobile World Congress earlier this year with a massive
MIMO demonstration that pushed multi-gigabit speeds over an LTE network. But, news aside, Sprint CTO John Saw
and COO of Technology Günther Ottendorfer tried out a few analogies to explain the concept of massive MIMO,
which, in this case, refers to an 128-antenna array in a 64-transmit/64-receive configuration.
“You have 128 ears to listen,” he said. “You used to have one ear – 128 ears in a sector where there are probably eight
or 16 users at the same time.” Ottendorfer took another swing with, “It’s like you have 128, how you call the things,
megaphones,” he said. “The theoretical concept of these antennas has been around for a long time but the computing
power wasn’t there. We are very happy that we have so much spectrum that we can grow into that spectrum and
massive MIMO is one of the things that will help us,” Ottendorfer added. In this case, the goal is to deploy using
Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum assets, which he said provide good quality and coverage. “To really make it work in a
mobile environment, you really need 2.5 GHz.”