  This paper investigates the sum-rate gains brought by power allocation
strategies in multicell massive multipleinput multiple-output systems, assuming
time-division duplex transmission. For both uplink and downlink, we derive
tractable expressions for the achievable rate with zero-forcing receivers and
precoders respectively. To avoid high complexity joint optimization across the
network, we propose a scheduling mechanism for power allocation, where in a
single time slot, only cells that do not interfere with each other adjust their
transmit powers. Based on this, corresponding transmit power allocation
strategies are derived, aimed at maximizing the sum rate per-cell. These
schemes are shown to bring considerable gains over equal power allocation for
practical antenna configurations (e.g., up to a few hundred). However, with
fixed number of users (N), these gains diminish as M turns to infinity, and
equal power allocation becomes optimal. A different conclusion is drawn for the
case where both M and N grow large together, in which case: (i) improved rates
are achieved as M grows with fixed M/N ratio, and (ii) the relative gains over
the equal power allocation diminish as M/N grows. Moreover, we also provide
applicable values of M/N under an acceptable power allocation gain threshold,
which can be used as to determine when the proposed power allocation schemes
yield appreciable gains, and when they do not. From the network point of view,
the proposed scheduling approach can achieve almost the same performance as the
joint power allocation after one scheduling round, with much reduced
complexity.
