Argos

TLDR

Multi‑user MIMO theory predicts large capacity gains by using many antennas and multi‑user beamforming, yet building a real‑world base station with a large number of antennas remains unachieved. This work introduces Argos, the first base‑station architecture that can serve many terminals simultaneously through multi‑user beamforming with a large antenna array (M >> 10). Argos achieves this by employing a hierarchical, modular design that partitions baseband processing, uses a fully distributed beamforming technique, and incorporates an internal calibration procedure so that channel‑estimation cost is independent of antenna count, and a 64‑antenna prototype can serve 15 clients concurrently. Experiments show that scaling from 1 to 64 antennas yields up to 6.7‑fold capacity gains while using only 1/64th of the transmission power.

Abstract

Multi-user multiple-input multiple-output theory predicts manyfold capacity gains by leveraging many antennas on wireless base stations to serve multiple clients simultaneously through multi-user beamforming (MUBF). However, realizing a base station with a large number antennas is non-trivial, and has yet to be achieved in the real-world. We present the design, realization, and evaluation of Argos, the first reported base station architecture that is capable of serving many terminals simultaneously through MUBF with a large number of antennas (M >> 10). Designed for extreme flexibility and scalability, Argos exploits hierarchical and modular design principles, properly partitions baseband processing, and holistically considers real-time requirements of MUBF. Argos employs a novel, completely distributed, beamforming technique, as well as an internal calibration procedure to enable implicit beamforming with channel estimation cost independent of the number of base station antennas. We report an Argos prototype with 64 antennas and capable of serving 15 clients simultaneously. We experimentally demonstrate that by scaling from 1 to 64 antennas the prototype can achieve up to 6.7 fold capacity gains while using a mere 1/64th of the transmission power.