  This paper presents the next evolution of FD-MIMO technology for beyond 5G,
where antennas of the FD-MIMO system are placed in a distributed manner
throughout the cell in a multi-cell deployment scenario. This system, referred
to as Distributed FD-MIMO (D-FD-MIMO) system, is capable of providing higher
cell average throughput as well as more uniform user experience compared to the
conventional FD-MIMO system. System level simulations are performed to evaluate
performance. Our results show that the proposed D-FD-MIMO system achieves 1.4-2
times cell average throughput gain compared to the FD-MIMO system. The insights
of performance gain are provided. Hardware implementation challenges and
potential standards impact are also presented.
