Spectral Efficiency Analysis of Downlink Transmission for Two-Way Cell-Free Massive MIMO System With Few-Bit ADCs

This paper studies the downlink spectral efficiency of a two-way cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output system with few-bit analog-to-digital converts (ADCs). By utilizing minimum mean squared error channel estimation method and maximal-ratio transmission precoder, we derive a closed-form expression for the effective downlink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), which applies to any number of access point (AP) antennas M and distortion factors of ADCs in both AP and user pair sides. Additionally, the obtained analytical expression specializes to the conventional one when the ideal ADCs are adopted. Moreover, the asymptotic performance and power scaling law of the effective SINR in high M regime are studied. The corresponding analysis indicates that increasing M can provide considerable gains to compensate the rate loss caused by non-ideal ADCs and also, appropriately cutting down the pilot power and transmission power will not affect the SINR performance in high M region. Finally, all the theoretical results are verified via simulations.