Traditional cellular networks struggle with poor quality of service (QoS) for cell-edge users, while cell-free (CF) systems offer uniform QoS but incur high roll-out costs due to acquiring numerous access point (AP) sites and deploying a large-scale optical fiber network to connect them. This paper proposes a cost-effective heterogeneous massive MIMO architecture that integrates centralized co-located antennas at a cell-center base station with distributed edge APs. By strategically splitting massive antennas between centralized and distributed nodes, the system maintains high user fairness comparable to CF systems but reduces infrastructure costs substantially, by minimizing the required number of AP sites and fronthaul connections. Numerical results demonstrate its superiority in balancing performance and costs compared to cellular and CF systems.

翻译：传统蜂窝网络在服务小区边缘用户时面临服务质量（QoS）低下的问题，而无小区（CF）系统虽能提供均匀的QoS，却因需获取大量接入点（AP）站点并部署大规模光纤网络进行连接而导致部署成本高昂。本文提出一种经济高效的异构大规模MIMO架构，该架构将位于小区中心的基站集中式共址天线与分布式边缘接入点相结合。通过将大规模天线策略性地分配于集中式与分布式节点之间，该系统在保持与CF系统相当的高用户公平性的同时，通过最小化所需接入点数量与前传连接，大幅降低了基础设施成本。数值仿真结果表明，相较于传统蜂窝系统与CF系统，该架构在性能与成本平衡方面具有显著优势。