Adaptive Neural Signal Detection for Massive MIMO

Symbol detection for Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) is a challenging problem for which traditional algorithms are either impractical or suffer from performance limitations. Several recently proposed learning-based approaches achieve promising results on simple channel models (e.g., i.i.d. Gaussian). However, their performance degrades significantly on real-world channels with spatial correlation. We propose MMNet, a deep learning MIMO detection scheme that significantly outperforms existing approaches on realistic channels with the same or lower computational complexity. MMNet's design builds on the theory of iterative soft-thresholding algorithms and uses a novel training algorithm that leverages temporal and spectral correlation to accelerate training. Together, these innovations allow MMNet to train online for every realization of the channel. On i.i.d. Gaussian channels, MMNet requires two orders of magnitude fewer operations than existing deep learning schemes but achieves near-optimal performance. On spatially-correlated channels, it achieves the same error rate as the next-best learning scheme (OAMPNet) at 2.5dB lower SNR and with at least 10x less computational complexity. MMNet is also 4--8dB better overall than a classic linear scheme like the minimum mean square error (MMSE) detector.