Channel Acquisition for Massive MIMO-OFDM with Adjustable Phase Shift Pilots

We propose adjustable phase shift pilots (APSPs) for channel acquisition in wideband massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to reduce the pilot overhead. Based on a physically motivated channel model, we first establish a relationship between channel space-frequency correlations and the channel power angle-delay spectrum in the massive antenna array regime, which reveals the channel sparsity in massive MIMO-OFDM. With this channel model, we then investigate channel acquisition, including channel estimation and channel prediction, for massive MIMO-OFDM with APSPs. We show that channel acquisition performance in terms of sum mean square error can be minimized if the user terminals' channel power distributions in the angle-delay domain can be made non-overlapping with proper phase shift scheduling. A simplified pilot phase shift scheduling algorithm is developed based on this optimal channel acquisition condition. The performance of APSPs is investigated for both one symbol and multiple symbol data models. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed APSP approach can provide substantial performance gains in terms of achievable spectral efficiency over the conventional phase shift orthogonal pilot approach in typical mobility scenarios.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Structured compressive sensing-based spatio-temporal joint channel estimation for FDD massive MIMO

Massive MIMO is a promising technique for future 5G communications due to its high spectrum and energy efficiency. To realize its potential performance gain, accurate channel estimation is essential. However, due to massive number of antennas at the base station (BS), the pilot overhead required by conventional channel estimation schemes will be unaffordable, especially for frequency division duplex (FDD) massive MIMO. To overcome this problem, we propose a structured compressive sensing (SCS)-based spatio-temporal joint channel estimation scheme to reduce the required pilot overhead, whereby the spatio-temporal common sparsity of delay-domain MIMO channels is leveraged. Particularly, we first propose the nonorthogonal pilots at the BS under the framework of CS theory to reduce the required pilot overhead. Then, an adaptive structured subspace pursuit (ASSP) algorithm at the user is proposed to jointly estimate channels associated with multiple OFDM symbols from the limited number of pilots, whereby the spatio-temporal common sparsity of MIMO channels is exploited to improve the channel estimation accuracy. Moreover, by exploiting the temporal channel correlation, we propose a space-time adaptive pilot scheme to further reduce the pilot overhead. Additionally, we discuss the proposed channel estimation scheme in multicell scenario. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can accurately estimate channels with the reduced pilot overhead, and it is capable of approaching the optimal oracle least squares estimator

A Generalized Framework on Beamformer Design and CSI Acquisition for Single-Carrier Massive MIMO Systems in Millimeter Wave Channels

In this paper, we establish a general framework on the reduced dimensional channel state information (CSI) estimation and pre-beamformer design for frequency-selective massive multiple-input multiple-output MIMO systems employing single-carrier (SC) modulation in time division duplex (TDD) mode by exploiting the joint angle-delay domain channel sparsity in millimeter (mm) wave frequencies. First, based on a generic subspace projection taking the joint angle-delay power profile and user-grouping into account, the reduced rank minimum mean square error (RR-MMSE) instantaneous CSI estimator is derived for spatially correlated wideband MIMO channels. Second, the statistical pre-beamformer design is considered for frequency-selective SC massive MIMO channels. We examine the dimension reduction problem and subspace (beamspace) construction on which the RR-MMSE estimation can be realized as accurately as possible. Finally, a spatio-temporal domain correlator type reduced rank channel estimator, as an approximation of the RR-MMSE estimate, is obtained by carrying out least square (LS) estimation in a proper reduced dimensional beamspace. It is observed that the proposed techniques show remarkable robustness to the pilot interference (or contamination) with a significant reduction in pilot overhead

An overview of transmission theory and techniques of large-scale antenna systems for 5G wireless communications

To meet the future demand for huge traffic volume of wireless data service, the research on the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems has been undertaken in recent years. It is expected that the spectral and energy efficiencies in 5G mobile communication systems should be ten-fold higher than the ones in the fourth generation (4G) mobile communication systems. Therefore, it is important to further exploit the potential of spatial multiplexing of multiple antennas. In the last twenty years, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna techniques have been considered as the key techniques to increase the capacity of wireless communication systems. When a large-scale antenna array (which is also called massive MIMO) is equipped in a base-station, or a large number of distributed antennas (which is also called large-scale distributed MIMO) are deployed, the spectral and energy efficiencies can be further improved by using spatial domain multiple access. This paper provides an overview of massive MIMO and large-scale distributed MIMO systems, including spectral efficiency analysis, channel state information (CSI) acquisition, wireless transmission technology, and resource allocation