Joint Clustering and Beamforming Design for Energy-Efficient Scalable Network-Assisted Full-Duplex Cell-Free Massive MIMO

This paper proposes a joint access point (AP) clustering and beamforming design method for network-assisted full-duplex cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (NAFD CF-mMIMO) systems that maximizes energy efficiency (EE) while maintaining high spectral efficiency (SE). The proposed method improves energy efficiency (EE) by reducing power consumption of APs with low contributions to performance. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves SE performance comparable to that of conventional methods designed to maximize SE.