Wideband mmWave Channel Estimation for Hybrid Massive MIMO with Low-Precision ADCs

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel wideband mmWave channel estimation method for hybrid massive MIMO systems with low-precision ADCs, combining LMMSE and OMP techniques to improve accuracy and efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a new channel estimator that effectively handles low-precision ADC quantization noise in hybrid mmWave MIMO systems, applicable to arbitrary channel models.

Findings

The proposed estimator outperforms conventional methods in simulations.

Incorporating OMP improves estimation efficiency for sparse mmWave channels.

The method effectively mitigates quantization noise from low-precision ADCs.

Abstract

In this article, we investigate channel estimation for wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) under hybrid architecture with lowprecision analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). To design channel estimation for the hybrid structure, both analog processing components and frequency-selective digital combiners need to be optimized. The proposed channel estimator follows the typical linear-minimum-mean-square-error (LMMSE) structure and applies for an arbitrary channel model. Moreover, for sparsity channels as in mmWave, the proposed estimator performs more efficiently by incorporating orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) to mitigate quantization noise caused by low-precision ADCs. Consequently, the proposed estimator outperforms conventional ones as demonstrated by computer simulation results.