  Wireless networks with many antennas at the base stations and multiplexing of
many users, known as Massive MIMO systems, are key to handle the rapid growth
of data traffic. As the number of users increases, the random access in
contemporary networks will be flooded by user collisions. In this paper, we
propose a reengineered random access protocol, coined strongest-user collision
resolution (SUCR). It exploits the channel hardening feature of Massive MIMO
channels to enable each user to detect collisions, determine how strong the
contenders' channels are, and only keep transmitting if it has the strongest
channel gain. The proposed SUCR protocol can quickly and distributively resolve
the vast majority of all pilot collisions.
