Pilot Sequence Design for Mitigating Pilot Contamination With Reduced RF Chains

Massive multiple-input, multiple-output (M-MIMO) is an important knowledge for fifth-generation (5G) wireless cellular networks. The pilot contamination (PC) is an issue in massive MIMO due to interference between adjacent cells. We proposed that the number of pilot sequence inside a cell could become smaller than or equal to the number of users (UEs), taking into account the different number of UEs that transmitted the same pilot sequence in the same cell. In addition, the pilot sequence became mutually orthogonal for different cells to prevent PC among cells. In this paper, we analyzed a channel estimation for time division duplex (TDD) and improved the achievable data rate by reducing the PC for limiting user capacity and using channel orthogonality for minimum mean square error (MMSE) precoding. From the simulation results, the proposed scheme provided a data rate for two several situations, with and without interference PC for an increased number of antennas. Consequently, increasing the number of coherence intervals made the channel estimation critical and provided a small data rate due to increased noise and interference at increased transmit pilot sequence.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are expected to achieve substantial gains in frequency efficiency compared to conventional MIMO systems. However, these promising gains are limited by the pilot contamination in multicell scenario, which results from reusing the same set of pilot sequences in neighboring cells. This paper proposes a clustering based pilot allocation (CPA) algorithm to mitigate the effects of pilot contamination. Specifically, we first define the inter-cell interference (ICI) relationship between users, based on which the users are divided into high and low ICI groups. Then, the users in low ICI group reuse pilots randomly, while the users in high ICI group are clustered by affinity propagation (AP) clustering method. Finally, we perform different pilot allocation strategies according to the types of user clusters. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the pilot efficiency compared to the existing pilot allocation algorithms using grouping ideas.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology is expected to achieve significant gains in both signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio (SINR) and throughput for 5G cellular wireless networks. Efficient and highly accurate channel state information (CSI) acquisition at the base stations (BS) is essential to achieve the potential benefits of massive MIMO systems. However, the inadequate number of orthogonal pilot sequences used for CSI estimation leads to erroneous channel estimation as it causes interference between pilot sequences. This phenomenon is coined pilot contamination and severely limits the system performance. Therefore, we address in this paper the pilot contamination problem in massive MIMO Cloud-Radio Access Networks systems. Leveraging on a real telecom operator data delivered by Call Detail Records (CDR), our objective is to maximize the average uplink achievable rate by reducing the effect of pilot contamination in massive MIMO Cloud-Radio Access Networks (C-RAN). As such a problem is a non-linear integer problem that has no solution in polynomial time, we develop a two-stage solution to solve it. First, a coalition game is proposed where Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) gather into clusters with random user-pilot allocation. Then, two greedy heuristics are applied to match each user in the cluster with a given pilot. The goal is to further improve the average uplink rate achieved in the first stage. Simulation results show that our heuristic solutions for pilot contamination mitigation outperform the traditional pilot allocation solution and a state-of-the-art pilot allocation scheme based on large-scale fading in terms of average uplink achievable rate and SINR.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a critical technology for future fifth-generation (5G) systems. Reduced pilot contamination (PC) enhanced system performance, and reduced inter-cell interference and improved channel estimation. However, because the pilot sequence transmitted by users in a single cell to neighboring cells is not orthogonal, massive MIMO systems are still constrained. We propose channel evaluation using orthogonal pilot reuse sequences (PRS) and zero forced (ZF) pre-coding techniques to eliminate channel quality in end users with poor channel quality based on channel evaluation, large-scale shutdown evaluation, and analysis of maximum transmission efficiency. We derived the lower bounds on the downlink data rate (DR) and signal-to-interference noise ratio (SINR) that can be achieved based on PRS assignment to a group of users where the number of antenna elements mitigated the interference when the number of antennas reaches infinity. The channel coherence interval limitation, the orthogonal PRS cannot be allocated to all UEs in each cell. The short coherence intervals able to reduce the PC and improve the quality of channel. The results of the modelling showed that higher DR can be achieved due to better channel evaluation and lower loss.

As a combination of spatial modulation (SM) system and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, massive SM aided MIMO (SM-MIMO) system is recently proposed. In broadband scenarios, single-carrier (SC) modulation is introduced to massive SM-MIMO system, thus massive SC-SM MIMO system is proposed for uplink multi-user transmission over frequency-selective fading channels. In this study, the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) of multi-cell massive SC-SM MIMO system is analysed, meanwhile the pilot contamination effect is taken into consideration. A tight SE lower bound of multi-cell massive SC-SM MIMO system is proposed with maximum ratio (MR) combining, which also takes into account the imperfect channel estimation, transmit antenna correlation and path loss. The tightness of the authors' proposed closed-form SE lower bound is shown via simulation results. The optimal pilot reuse factor can be determined with different system configurations by simulations, and the pilot reuse factor that is larger than one is more suitable for less TAs and user equipments.

The base station (BS) density influences the coverage performance of cellular communication system. In massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system, each BS is equipped with large scale antenna array. The stochastic geometric model is employed because of its analytical tractability. This paper demonstrates that BS density has to be below a certain bound in order to satisfy the coverage requirement in massive MIMO system. Closed-form expression for the BS density bounded by maximum outage probability is derived using Lambert W function. Moreover, the expression for the upper bound of successful area spectral efficiency (ASE) is also derived. Our study claims that increasing BS density will lead to the deterioration of coverage performance in massive MIMO system.

Accurate beamspace channel estimation is critical in wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. However, the beam squint effect caused by the increase in bandwidth and array dimension can bring additional challenges to the wideband channel estimation. In this study, we propose a wideband channel estimation scheme based on compressed sensing to solve the beam squint effect in broadband mmWave massive MIMO systems. First, the channel estimation problem is transformed into a beamspace direction estimation problem by exploiting the special frequency-dependent sparse structure of a broadband beamspace channel. Then, we propose a beam-band function-based orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm, in which a beam-band function is constructed and used to capture the power of each path component to estimate the spatial direction. In addition, the support of each path component at different sub-carriers is estimated to reduce the influence of the beam squint effect. Moreover, the support is estimated adaptively to improve the estimation accuracy further. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme reduces the pilot overhead under the beam squint effect and improve the estimation accuracy significantly.

Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems can significantly improve the system performance and capacity by using a large number of antenna elements at the base station (BS). To reduce the system complexity and hardware cost, low complexity antenna selection techniques can be used to choose the best antenna subset while keeping the system performance at a certain required level. In this paper, Tabu Search (TS) and three bio-inspired optimization algorithms were used for antenna selection in Massive MIMO systems. The three bio-inspired algorithms were: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC). Simulations showed promising results for the TS by achieving higher capacity with GA than PSO and ABC, and much shorter CPU time than any of the bio-inspired techniques.

Massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system enhances area throughput by achieving high spectral efficiency. Pilot contamination limits the system performance. In this paper, we propose a pilot reuse factor adoption and applying multi-cell minimum mean square error (M-MMSE) precoding/combining scheme under the assumption of Laplacian correlation model to mitigate pilot contamination. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the other existing precoding/combining schemes in decontaminating pilots and achieving larger spectral efficiency. The price to pay for interference rejection and spectral efficiency improvement is a small reduction in the desired signal power and an increase in the system computational complexity.

Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology is one of the promising technologies for fifth generation (5G) cellular communications. In this technology, each cell has a base station (BS) with a large number of antennas, allowing the simultaneous use of the same resources (e.g., frequency and/or time slots) by multiple users of a cell. Therefore, massive MIMO systems can bring very high spectral and power efficiencies. However, this technology faces some important issues that need to be addressed. One of these issues is the performance degradation due to hardware impairments, since low-cost RF chains need to be employed. Another issue is the channel estimation and channel aging effects, especially in fast mobility environments. In this paper we will perform a comprehensive study on these two issues considering two of the most promising candidate waveforms for massive MIMO systems: Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single-carrier frequency domain processing (SC-FDP). The studies and the results show that hardware impairments and inaccurate channel knowledge can degrade the performance of massive MIMO systems extensively. However, using suitable low complex estimation and compensation techniques and also selecting a suitable waveform can reduce these effects.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), or large-scale MIMO, is one of the key technologies for future wireless networks to exhibit a large accessible spectrum and throughput. The performance of a massive MIMO system is strongly reliant on the nature of various channels and interference during multipath transmission. Therefore, it is important to compute accurate channel estimation. This paper considers a massive MIMO system with one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) on each receiver antenna of the base station. Deep learning (DL)-based channel estimation framework has been developed to reduce signal processing complexity. This DL framework uses conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) and various convolutional neural networks, namely reverse residual network (reverse ResNet), squeeze-and-excitation ResNet (SE ResNet), ResUNet++, and reverse SE ResNet, as the generator model of cGAN for extracting the features from the quantized received signals. The simulation results of this paper show that the trained residual block-based generator model of cGAN has better channel generation performance than the standard generator model in terms of mean square error.

Channel estimation is crucial for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems to scale up multi-user MIMO, providing significant improvement in spectral and energy efficiency. In this paper, we present a simple and practical channel estimator for multipath multi-cell massive MIMO time division duplex systems with pilot contamination, which poses significant challenges to channel estimation. The proposed estimator addresses performance under moderate to strong pilot contamination without previous knowledge of the inter-cell large-scale fading coefficients and noise power. Additionally, we derive and assess an approximate analytical mean square error (MSE) expression for the proposed channel estimator. We show through simulations that the proposed estimator performs asymptotically as well as the minimum MSE estimator with respect to the number of antennas and multipath coefficients.

Recently, massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) is considered as a promising technology to significantly improve the spectral and energy efficiency of fifth generation (5G) networks. Massive MIMO increases the energy efficiency (EE) by three orders of magnitude as compared to single antenna systems. In this paper, we review and analyze energy efficient resource allocation techniques for massive MIMO system. To this end, the energy efficiency of massive massive MIMO with linear processing is formulated. Analytical formulation is provided for the spectral efficiency (SE) and total system power consumption model. The tradeoff on the spectral and energy efficiency is analyzed. The impacts of propagation and system parameters on the SE-EE tradeoff are investigated. Then, large scale fading based analytical approximation for the energy efficiency is formulated. Finally, numerical simulation is done to validate the theoretical analysis.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are a main enabler of the excessive throughput requirements in 5G and future generation wireless networks as they can serve many users simultaneously with high spectral and energy efficiency. To achieve this massive MIMO systems require accurate and timely channel state information (CSI), which is acquired by a training process that involves pilot transmission, CSI estimation, and feedback. This training process incurs a training overhead, which scales with the number of antennas, users, and subcarriers. Reducing the training overhead in massive MIMO systems has been a major topic of research since the emergence of the concept. Recently, deep learning (DL)-based approaches have been proposed and shown to provide significant reduction in the CSI acquisition and feedback overhead in massive MIMO systems compared to traditional techniques. In this paper, we present an overview of the state-of-the-art DL architectures and algorithms used for CSI acquisition and feedback, and provide further research directions.

In this paper, we develop the channel estimation algorithm for a massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system using one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Although, one-bit quantization significantly reduces the deployment cost and power consumption of the massive MIMO, the great distortion induced by one-bit quantization makes channel estimation more difficult. Therefore, a channel estimation method by executing a deep neural network (DNN) over multiple signal segments is proposed for the uplink of one-bit massive MIMO. The average of the DNN’s outputs throughout all the segments is the final channel estimate for a transmission block. In order to improve the estimation accuracy without increasing the length of pilot, the data symbols got based on the initial channel estimates are used as the other part of pilots to refine the estimation result. Moreover, a sliding window based pilot segment method is adopted to increase the number of signal segments with a same pilot length. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms least squares (LS) and Bussgang linear minimum mean squared error (BLMMSE) channel estimators in the whole signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) region.