Near-Field MIMO Communications for 6G: Fundamentals, Challenges, Potentials, and Future Directions
By Mingyao Cui, Zidong Wu, Yu Lu, Xiuhong Wei, Linglong Dai. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2023
470 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA) is a common feature of several key candidate technologies for sixth generation (6G) mobile networks, such as ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output (UM-MIMO), cell-free massive MIMO, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), and terahertz communications. Since the number of antennas is very large for ELAA, the electromagnetic radiation field needs to be modeled by near-field spherical waves, which differs from the conventional planar-wave-based radiation model of 5G massive MIMO. As a result, near-field MIMO communications will become essential in 6G wireless networks. In this article, we systematically investigate the emerging near-field communication techniques. First, we present the fundamentals of nearfield communications and the metric to determine the near-field ranges in typical communication scenarios. Then we investigate recent studies specific to near-field communications by classifying them into two categories: techniques addressing the challenges and those exploiting the potentials in near-field regions. Their principles, recent progress, pros, and cons are discussed. More importantly, several open problems and future research directions for near-field communications are pointed out. We believe that this article will inspire more innovations in this important research topic of near-field MIMO communications for 6G.
Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/71cffd56ba1884d7b3f9623ab4c997e05770c324
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Aerospace Engineering
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Xidong Mu
- Yuanwei Liu
- Robert Schober
- Jiaqi Xu
- Chongjun Ouyang
- Zhao-Jie Wang
- Zhiguo Ding
- Naofal Al-Dhahir
Citations in the corpus
- Near-Field Communications: A Tutorial Review (2023, background): “The authors of [22] provided an overview of NFC, covering aspects such as field boundaries, challenges, potential applications, and future research directions.”
- A Tutorial on Near-Field XL-MIMO Communications Toward 6G (2023, unknown): “[57] Near-field spherical wave & technical challenges Discuss the principle, recent progress, and future directions of near-field communications.”
- A Tutorial on Fluid Antenna System for 6G Networks: Encompassing Communication Theory, Optimization Methods and Hardware Designs (2024, background): “If the distance is less than the Rayleigh distance, then the region is considered near-field, and the electromagnetic field should be modeled using spherical waves [273], [274].”