Performance Analysis of Channel Extrapolation in FDD Massive MIMO Systems

Channel estimation for the downlink of frequency division duplex (FDD) massive MIMO systems is well known to generate a large overhead as the amount of training generally scales with the number of transmit antennas in a MIMO system. In this paper, we consider the solution of extrapolating the channel frequency response from uplink pilot estimates to the downlink frequency band, which completely removes the training overhead. We first show that conventional estimators fail to achieve reasonable accuracy. We propose instead to use high-resolution channel estimation. We derive theoretical lower bounds (LB) for the mean squared error (MSE) of the extrapolated channel. Assuming that the paths are well separated, the LB is simplified in an expression that gives considerable physical insight. It is then shown that the MSE is inversely proportional to the number of receive antennas while the extrapolation performance penalty scales with the square of the ratio of the frequency offset and the training bandwidth. The channel extrapolation performance is validated through numeric simulations and experimental measurements taken in an anechoic chamber. Our main conclusion is that channel extrapolation is a viable solution for FDD massive MIMO systems if accurate system calibration is performed and favorable propagation conditions are present.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1902.0684

Dual CNN based channel estimation for MIMO-OFDM systems

Recently, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based channel estimation (CE) for massive multiple-input multiple-output communication systems has achieved remarkable success. However, complexity even needs to be reduced, and robustness can even be improved. Meanwhile, existing methods do not accurately explain which channel features help the denoising of CNNs. In this paper, we first compare the strengths and weaknesses of CNN-based CE in different domains. When complexity is limited, the channel sparsity in the angle-delay domain improves denoising and robustness whereas large noise power and pilot contamination are handled well in the spatial-frequency domain. Thus, we develop a novel network, called dual CNN, to exploit the advantages in the two domains. Furthermore, we introduce an extra neural network, called HyperNet, which learns to detect scenario changes from the same input as the dual CNN. HyperNet updates several parameters adaptively and combines the existing dual CNNs to improve robustness. Experimental results show improved estimation performance for the time-varying scenarios. To further exploit the correlation in the time domain, a recurrent neural network framework is developed, and training strategies are provided to ensure robustness to the changing of temporal correlation. This design improves channel estimation performance but its complexity is still low