Comprehensive Analysis of Behavioral Hardware Impairments in Cell-Free Massive MIMO-OFDM Uplink: Centralized Operation

Abstract

Cell-free massive MIMO is a key 6G technology, offering superior spectral and energy efficiency. However, its dense deployment of low-cost access points (APs) makes hardware impairments unavoidable. While narrowband impairments are well-studied, their impact in wideband systems remains unexplored. This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of hardware impairments - such as nonlinear distortion in low-noise amplifiers, phase noise, in-phase/quadrature imbalance, and low-resolution analog-to-digital converters - on uplink spectral efficiency in cell-free massive MIMO. Using an OFDM waveform and centralized processing, APs share channel state information for joint uplink combining. Leveraging Bussgang decomposition, we derive a distortion-aware combining vector that optimizes spectral efficiency by modeling distortion as independent colored noise. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.