On the Effect of Mutual Coupling in One-Bit Spatial Sigma-Delta Massive MIMO Systems

The one-bit spatial Sigma-Delta concept has recently been proposed as an approach for achieving low distortion and low power consumption for massive multi-input multi-output systems. The approach exploits users located in known angular sectors or spatial oversampling to shape the quantization noise away from desired directions of arrival. While reducing the antenna spacing alleviates the adverse impact of quantization noise, it can potentially deteriorate the performance of the massive array due to excessive mutual coupling. In this paper, we analyze the impact of mutual coupling on the uplink spectral efficiency of a spatial one-bit Sigma-Delta massive MIMO architecture, and compare the resulting performance degradation to standard one-bit quantization as well has the ideal case with infinite precision. Our analysis shows that the one-bit Sigma-Delta array is particularly advantages in space-constrained scenarios, and that antenna spacings of no more than one-quarter wavelength are sufficient to exploit the quantization noise shaping.