Channel Estimation in Massive MIMO Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes novel semi-blind channel estimation methods for massive MIMO systems that outperform existing techniques by effectively reducing pilot contamination interference.

Contribution

It introduces semi-blind estimation techniques based on MAP principles that improve accuracy over traditional linear and blind methods in massive MIMO.

Findings

Semi-blind estimator outperforms existing methods in simulations.

Proposed methods effectively suppress pilot contamination.

Improved channel estimation accuracy in massive MIMO systems.

Abstract

We introduce novel blind and semi-blind channel estimation methods for cellular time-division duplexing systems with a large number of antennas at each base station. The methods are based on the maximum a-posteriori principle given a prior for the distribution of the channel vectors and the received signals from the uplink training and data phases. Contrary to the state-of-the-art massive MIMO channel estimators which either perform linear estimation based on the pilot symbols or rely on a blind principle, the proposed semi-blind method efficiently suppresses most of the interference caused by pilot-contamination. The simulative analysis illustrates that the semi-blind estimator outperforms state- of-the-art linear and non-linear approaches to the massive MIMO channel estimation problem.