Joint Coherent/Non-Coherent Detection for Distributed Massive MIMO: Enabling Cooperation Under Mixed Channel State Information

Abstract

Beyond-5G wireless systems increasingly rely on distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architectures to achieve high spectral efficiency, low latency, and wide coverage. A key challenge in such networks is that cooperating base stations (BSs) often possess different levels of channel state information (CSI) due to fronthaul constraints, user mobility, or hardware limitation. In this paper, we propose two novel detectors that enable cooperation between BSs with differing CSI availability. In this setup, some BSs have access to instantaneous CSI, while others only have long-term channel information. The proposed detectors—termed the coherent/non-coherent (CNC) detector and t..