Dominant Channel Estimation via MIPS for Large-Scale Antenna Systems with One-Bit ADCs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel channel estimation method for large-scale antenna systems with one-bit ADCs, leveraging MIPS for DOA estimation and addressing the information loss due to coarse quantization.

Contribution

It proposes a new channel estimator that combines MIPS-based DOA estimation with likelihood-based fading coefficient estimation for one-bit ADC systems.

Findings

Effective dominant channel estimation using MIPS

Analysis of information loss due to one-bit quantization

Improved understanding of channel estimation limits with one-bit ADCs

Abstract

In large-scale antenna systems, using one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) has recently become important since they offer significant reductions in both power and cost. However, in contrast to high-resolution ADCs, the coarse quantization of one-bit ADCs results in an irreversible loss of information. In the context of channel estimation, studies have been developed extensively to combat the performance loss incurred by one-bit ADCs. Furthermore, in the field of array signal processing, direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation combined with one-bit ADCs has gained growing interests recently to minimize the estimation error. In this paper, a channel estimator is proposed for one-bit ADCs where the channels are characterized by their angular geometries, e.g., uniform linear arrays (ULAs). The goal is to estimate the dominant channel among multiple paths. The proposed channel estimator first finds the DOA estimate using the maximum inner product search (MIPS). Then, the channel fading coefficient is estimated using the concavity of the log-likelihood function. The limit inherent in one-bit ADCs is also investigated, which results from the loss of magnitude information.