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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/massive-mimo-wireless-connectivity-and-iot-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Telecom & Wireless · Patent LandscapeMassive MIMO Patents for Wireless Connectivity and IoT
- Filing has cooled since its 2017 peak of 12, with the 2022 midpoint down to 4 — a pattern of flat-to-declining activity, not a growing race.
- Every tracked leading assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, including two firms with a documented -100% YoY drop, suggesting a filing pause rather than retreat from the field.
- H04B transmission claims dominate 44 of the tracked records, while AI-linked (G06N) and antenna-hardware (H01Q) claims stay in single digits — a narrow claim base for a broad application space.
46
Published Records
+25%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
IN
Leading Jurisdiction
26
Active Filers Ranked
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (5) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What the massive MIMO / mMTC patent record shows
Massive MIMO patenting for machine-type and IoT connectivity is a small, concentrated dataset: 46 published records mapped to 46 patent families across the 2015-2026 window. Filing activity peaked early, in 2017 at 12 filings, and has not returned to that level since — the 2022 midpoint of 4 filings confirms a flat-to-declining trajectory rather than a technology still accelerating into maturity. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final one or two years in any chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be, but even allowing for that lag this is a mature, not an expanding, filing curve.
Filing offices split fairly evenly across India, the United States and WIPO's PCT route, each near 10 filings, with Europe, China and Australia trailing behind — a sign that applicants are hedging across jurisdictions rather than concentrating on one home market, consistent with a technology tied to global 5G/6G standards work.
Filing activity by year, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Data
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 46-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend, 2017 peak to 2026
Filings ran at 12 in 2017, the highest point in the series, fell to a midpoint of 4 by 2022, and sit at 1 in the most recent (partial) year — read the last one or two years as undercounted due to publication lag, but the multi-year decline predates that effect.
IPC subclass distribution
H04B (general transmission) covers 44 of 46 records, with H04L (digital transmission, 16) and H04W (wireless networks, 15) layered underneath most filings. G06N (AI-based computing, 4), G01N (material analysis, 1) and H01Q (antennas, 1) each appear in only a handful of records, marking them as thin claim territory rather than crowded ground.
Shares are the percentage of the 46 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about massive mimo wireless connectivity and iot and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Most-cited records in the corpus
Representative Filing
Cell-free massive MIMO transmission method, and apparatus for the same
ELECTRONICS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
The filing describes a control-plane method for switching terminals between a basic transmission mode and a cell-free massive MIMO mode based on terminal-reported status, then coordinating analog beam and digital precoder selection across access nodes according to channel quality between terminals and those nodes.Filed by Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), published 2022-04-21.
Top-cited massive MIMO / mMTC records
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170324455A1 | Reference signals and link adaptation for massive MIMO | 46 |
| 2 | US20220123795A1 | Cell-free massive MIMO transmission method, and apparatus for the same | 18 |
| 3 | CN109075827A | 用于大容量MIMO的参考信号和链路适配 | 17 |
| 4 | US20180084586A1 | Multi-user random access procedures for massive MIMO wireless communication systems | 12 |
| 5 | WO2020042107A1 | Determination of downlink channel state information in massive MIMO systems | 9 |
| 6 | WO2017196604A1 | Reference signals and link adaptation for massive MIMO | 8 |
| 7 | US10505597B2 | Reference signals and link adaptation for massive MIMO | 7 |
| 8 | US20230056240A1 | Method and apparatus for modular massive MIMO | 4 |
| 9 | CA3020227A1 | Reference signals and link adaptation for massive MIMO | 4 |
| 10 | WO2024220019A1 | DMRS-based uplink dimension reduction in massive MIMO radio unit | 3 |
Citation counts reflect influence within this searched corpus and skew toward older filings; treat them as a signal of what the field has built on, not of what matters most today.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three signals stand out once the ranking and trend data are read together: where claim density sits, how citation influence is distributed, and what the office split implies about strategy.
Claim Concentration
44 of 46
records touch H04B
General transmission carries almost every filing
Nearly every record in this dataset sits under H04B, with H04L and H04W layered on top in roughly a third of cases. That leaves the intersection of massive MIMO with AI-based resource allocation (G06N, 4 records) and with antenna hardware design (H01Q, 1 record) comparatively open.
IPC subclass counts, this dataset
Citation Influence
46 citations
on the top-cited record
Influence is concentrated in a handful of early filings
The most-cited record draws more than double the citations of the next entry, and the top five span 2017 to 2020 filings. That pattern is typical of an older, foundational cohort setting the reference frame — newer filings simply haven't had time to accumulate citations yet.
Top-cited records, this dataset
Filing Geography
India, US, WIPO ≈10 each
receiving offices
No single home jurisdiction dominates
India, the United States and the WIPO PCT route each carry around 10 filings, with Europe, China and Australia behind them. That even spread points to standards-linked, multi-market filing rather than a single dominant domestic strategy.
Receiving office counts, this dataset
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to massive mimo wireless connectivity and iot, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who holds the claim space, and where the field has slowed
The named assignees in this dataset are the standards-heavy telecom incumbents one would expect, but recency data tells a more interesting story than the ranking alone: nobody is currently filing.
Filing Pattern
0 in latest year
across every tracked leading assignee
A field-wide filing pause, not just a slowdown
Every leading assignee tracked in the recent-momentum data — including two firms carrying a documented -100% YoY change — shows zero filings in the latest year. That is a stronger signal than a gradual decline: the leading filers have paused activity in this specific claim space at the same time.
Recent-year momentum, this dataset
Collaboration
4 co-assignee pairs
identified in this dataset
Collaboration is limited and internal
The only co-assignee pairings in this dataset connect entities within the same corporate group, the strongest pair appearing together five times. There is no evidence here of cross-company joint filing in this niche.
Co-assignee pairs, this dataset
Citation Leadership
US20170324455A1, 46 citations
most-cited record in the corpus
An early reference-signal filing still anchors the field
The top-cited record, on reference signals and link adaptation for massive MIMO, was filed years before the rest of the top five and still leads citations by a wide margin — a marker of a foundational claim that later filings had to work around or build on.
Most-cited records, this dataset
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 0 | — |
| Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy | 0 | — |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | 0 | -100% |
| Nokia Shanghai Bell Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) | 0 | — |
| Nokia Networks Oy | 0 | — |
| National Instruments Corporation | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a field with settled claim ownership at the top and thin coverage in a few specific branches. Two directions follow from that.
Stress-test a filing against the top-cited claims
Before drafting in the reference-signal or link-adaptation space, check new claim language against the highest-cited records in this corpus — they anchor what examiners and competitors already treat as prior art.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaScope the under-claimed branches before committing R&D
The AI-resource-allocation and antenna-hardware overlaps identified here carry only a handful of records each. Confirming that thinness holds outside this specific search string is a fast way to de-risk a filing decision.
Explore white space in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about massive MIMO / IoT patents
This dataset tracks 46 published records mapped to 46 patent families, filtered by massive MIMO and large-scale antenna terminology combined with machine-type communication and IoT connectivity keywords, over 2015-2026. That is a small, tightly scoped corpus rather than the full massive MIMO literature, since it specifically requires the IoT/mMTC intersection. Broader massive MIMO searches without that intersection filter would return a substantially larger set.
No — filing peaked in 2017 at 12 records and has declined since, with the 2022 midpoint down to 4. The most recent year shows only 1 filing, though that figure is understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Even accounting for that lag, the multi-year trend from 2017 onward is flat to declining, not accelerating.
The leading assignees tracked in this dataset are major telecom equipment and chipset firms with long-standing standards involvement, including Nokia-affiliated entities, Ericsson, Samsung, Qualcomm and Korea's ETRI. Notably, every one of these leading assignees shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, with some recording a -100% year-over-year change. That points to a pause in this specific claim space rather than an active filing race among incumbents.
US20220123795A1, filed by Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, describes a method for switching terminals between basic and cell-free massive MIMO transmission modes based on terminal status reports, then coordinating analog beamforming and digital precoding across access nodes using channel-quality data. It is the second most-cited record in this corpus, with 18 citations, indicating it is treated as a reference point for cell-free MIMO control-plane design. Anyone building terminal-switching or multi-node precoder coordination logic for cell-free deployments should review its claim scope closely.
IPC composition data shows claim density concentrated in general transmission (H04B, present in 44 of 46 records) and secondarily in digital transmission and wireless networks (H04L, H04W). By contrast, the overlap between massive MIMO and AI-based resource allocation (G06N, 4 records), antenna hardware (H01Q, 1 record), and material/channel analysis (G01N, 1 record) is thin. Those overlaps are candidate areas for new filings, though their thinness should be verified with a broader search before committing R&D resources.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Massive MIMO Wireless Connectivity and IoT covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.