A programmable baseband processor for massive MIMO uplink multi-user detection

Massive MIMO is a promising technology for the coming 5G wireless systems. In this paper, a programmable baseband processor specifically designed for uplink symbol detection targeting massive MIMO is presented with a novel matrix inversion method proposed to obtain more precise and efficient computation. Including a microcode controlled channel preprocessing unit and a pipelined detection unit, the detector is flexible enough to adaptively support both linear and nonlinear detection algorithms.