Current cellular systems achieve high spectral efficiency through Massive MIMO, which leverages an abundance of antennas to create favorable propagation conditions for multiuser spatial multiplexing. Looking towards future networks, the extrapolation of this paradigm leads to systems with many hundreds of antennas per base station, raising concerns regarding hardware complexity, cost, and power consumption. This article suggests more intelligent array designs that reduce the need for excessive antenna numbers. We revisit classical uniform array design principles and explain how their uniform spatial sampling leads to unnecessary redundancies in practical deployment scenarios. By exploiting non-uniform sparse arrays with site-specific antenna placements -- based on either pre-optimized irregular arrays or real-time movable antennas -- we demonstrate how superior multiuser MIMO performance can be achieved with far fewer antennas. These principles are inspired by previous works on wireless localization. We explain and demonstrate numerically how these concepts can be adapted for communications to improve the average sum rate and similar metrics. The results suggest a paradigm shift for future antenna array design, where antenna intelligence replaces sheer antenna count. This opens new opportunities for efficient, adaptable, and sustainable Gigantic MIMO systems.

翻译：当前蜂窝系统通过大规模多输入多输出技术实现高频谱效率，该技术利用大量天线为多用户空间复用创造有利的传播条件。展望未来网络，该范式的延伸将导致每个基站配备数百天线的系统，引发对硬件复杂性、成本和功耗的担忧。本文提出更智能的阵列设计方案，以减少对过量天线数量的依赖。我们重新审视经典均匀阵列设计原理，并解释其在实际部署场景中因均匀空间采样导致的不必要冗余。通过采用基于预优化非规则阵列或实时可移动天线的站点特异性非均匀稀疏阵列布局，我们证明了仅需远少于传统方案的天线数量即可实现更优的多用户MIMO性能。这些设计原理受先前无线定位研究的启发。我们通过数值模拟阐明并验证如何将这些概念应用于通信系统以提升平均和速率等性能指标。研究结果表明未来天线阵列设计需要范式转变，即用天线智能取代单纯的天线数量堆叠。这为构建高效、自适应且可持续的超大规模MIMO系统开辟了新路径。