ArgosNet: A Multi-Cell Many-Antenna MU-MIMO Platform

Clayton Shepard†‡, Rahman Doost-Mohammady†, Jian Ding†, Ryan E. Guerra†‡, and Lin Zhong† †Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX ‡Skylark Wireless LLC, Houston, TX [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] . Abstract—We built and deployed a multi-cell network testbed of massive-MIMO base stations across Rice University campus, called ArgosNet. While ArgosNet is highly configurable, its default configuration employs four 100-antenna base stations to serve 40 battery-powered mobile clients at 3.7 GHz. In ArgosNet, the base stations are time-frequency synchronized and have direct fiber connections to a server cluster, enabling advanced wireless techniques such as Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP). We extended the Argos channel measurement system to support multi-cell topologies, then conducted initial measurements showing the performance of CoMP in many-antenna MU-MIMO networks.