A 3D Non-Stationary Wideband Massive MIMO Channel Model Based on Ray-Level Evolution

In this paper, a novel space-time non-stationary three-dimensional (3D) wideband massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel model is proposed. We then propose a ray-level process to model the spatial-temporal evolution of individual multipath components (MPCs), including near-field effects and (dis)appearance, and cluster-level large-scale fading. The proposed evolution process can flexibly control rays’ lifespans and smoothness of (dis)appearance in both space and time domains. In addition, we propose an improved Rayleigh-distance criterion to determine the most adequate wavefront for each cluster and ray. Existing models can easily implement the proposed criterion and make a more efficient use of computation resources. Also, a Gamma-Poisson mixture distribution is introduced to model the distribution of the number of clusters when multiple locations of the mobile station are considered. Key statistical properties of the channel, including the autocorrelation function (ACF), Doppler power spectral density (PSD), spatial cross-correlation function (S-CCF), and frequency correlation function (FCF), are derived and the impact of the ray-level evolution process on them is analyzed. We demonstrate the correctness of the derived statistical properties through numerical and simulation results.