Channel Acquisition for HF Skywave Massive MIMO-OFDM Communications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel channel acquisition method for HF skywave massive MIMO-OFDM systems using triple beams, optimizing pilot design, reducing overhead, and employing a low-complexity estimation algorithm with demonstrated superior performance.

Contribution

It proposes a triple beam based channel model, optimal pilot reuse conditions, a channel prediction method, and a low-complexity estimation algorithm for HF skywave massive MIMO-OFDM communications.

Findings

Reduced pilot overhead through pilot reuse conditions

Effective channel prediction for data segments

Superior simulation performance of the proposed method

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate channel acquisition for high frequency (HF) skywave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation. We first introduce the concept of triple beams (TBs) in the space-frequency-time (SFT) domain and establish a TB based channel model using sampled triple steering vectors. With the established channel model, we then investigate the optimal channel estimation and pilot design for pilot segments. Specifically, we find the conditions that allow pilot reuse among multiple user terminals (UTs), which significantly reduces pilot overhead and increases the number of UTs that can be served. Moreover, we propose a channel prediction method for data segments based on the estimated TB domain channel. To reduce the complexity, we formulate the channel estimation as a statistical inference problem and then obtain the channel by the proposed constrained Bethe free energy minimization (CBFEM) based channel estimation algorithm, which can be implemented with low complexity by exploiting the structure of the TB matrix together with the chirp z-transform (CZT). Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed channel acquisition approach.