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Review
. 2023 Feb 8;23(4):1921.
doi: 10.3390/s23041921.

Emerging MIMO Technologies for 6G Networks

Victoria Dala Pegorara Souto  1 , Plínio Santini Dester  2 , Michelle Soares Pereira Facina  3 , Daniely Gomes Silva  1 , Felipe Augusto Pereira de Figueiredo  1 , Gustavo Rodrigues de Lima Tejerina  1 , José Cândido Silveira Santos Filho  2 , Juliano Silveira Ferreira  1 , Luciano Leonel Mendes  1 , Richard Demo Souza  4 , Paulo Cardieri  2
Affiliations
Review

Emerging MIMO Technologies for 6G Networks

Victoria Dala Pegorara Souto et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

The demand for wireless connectivity has grown exponentially over the last years. By 2030 there should be around 17 billion of mobile-connected devices, with monthly data traffic in the order of thousands of exabytes. Although the Fifth Generation (5G) communications systems present far more features than Fourth Generation (4G) systems, they will not be able to serve this growing demand and the requirements of innovative use cases. Therefore, Sixth Generation (6G) Networks are expected to support such massive connectivity and guarantee an increase in performance and quality of service for all users. To deal with such requirements, several technical issues need to be addressed, including novel multiple-antenna technologies. Then, this survey gives a concise review of the main emerging Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technologies for 6G Networks such as massive MIMO (mMIMO), extremely large MIMO (XL-MIMO), Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS), and Cell-Free mMIMO (CF-mMIMO). Moreover, we present a discussion on how some of the expected key performance indicators (KPIs) of some novel 6G Network use cases can be met with the development of each MIMO technology.

Keywords: 6G networks; IRS; XL-MIMO; cell-free mMIMO; massive MIMO.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Survey organization.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison between traditional MIMO system, massive MIMO systems, and XL-MIMO systems.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Cell-free network.
Figure 4
Figure 4
IRS applications.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Large Scale Digital Twins use case: Physical city and its corresponding digital twin.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Collaborative robotics use case.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Advanced agribusiness use case: Future agriculture.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Invisible security zones use case: Invisible checkpoints for security in airports.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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