Martin Kurras' doctoral thesis successfully defended

Martin Kurras, research associate at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI, completed and successfully defended his doctorate with the title "Massive MIMO in Cellular Networks" at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH).The examination board chaired by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hoc Khiem Trieu (TUHH) consisted of the experts Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Bauch (TUHH) and Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Tobias Weber (University of Rostock).

Kurras' dissertation  examines the application of large antenna arrays to base stations in cellular systems, commonly referred to as "Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO)”. These are intended to improve spectral efficiency in the downlink and three-dimensional localization by directional estimation in the uplink. The work shows that large antenna arrays also lead to spectral efficiency gains in frequency duplex systems, using a combination of hybrid precoding and explicit channel condition information knowledge at the base station. This finding also applies under realistic pilot and feedback assumptions and in interference limited mobile radio networks. The development of a new, search-based algorithm for directional estimation is another core aspect of the work. This significantly reduces complexity compared to the brute force method  while maintaining the same estimation quality.

In 2009 Martin Kurras began his work at Fraunhofer HHI as a student assistant. Since 2011 he works as research associate in the department Wireless Communications and Networks and is currently project manager and deputy head of of the research group System Level Innovations.