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The following description relates generally to a method and an apparatus for pilot decontamination in a massive MIMO system (also known as “Large-Scale Antenna System”) and, more particularly, to a massive MIMO communication system based on channel estimation with topological interference alignment.
Massive MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) is an emerging technology where the number of mobile terminals (UE) is much less than the number of base station antennas. In a rich scattering environment, the full advantages of the massive MIMO system can be exploited using simple beamforming strategies such as maximum ratio transmission (MRT) or zero forcing (ZF). To achieve these benefits of massive MIMO, accurate channel state information (CSI) must be available perfectly. However, in practice, the channel between the transmitter and receiver is estimated from orthogonal pilot sequences which are limited by the coherence time of the channel. Most importantly, in a multicell setup, the reuse of pilot sequences of several co-channel cells will create pilot contamination. When there is pilot contamination, the performance of massive MIMO degrades quite drastically.
If a base station (BS) is equipped with a large antenna number, there will be special aspect called channel hardening, which means the small scale fading is smoothed out by the asymptotically infinite number of antennas. Channel hardening refers to the phenomenon where the off-diagonal terms of the HHH matrix become increasingly weaker compared to the diagonal terms as the size of the channel gain matrix H increases.
For example, if one assumes each of all the L cells has K UEs (user equipment) for different cells their k-th UE use the same pilot slot, then the capacity with antenna number M approaching infinity can be expressed as
because
where the scalar p is the transmit power, M is the number of the BS antenna, H is the channel gain matrix, (•)H denotes the Hermitian matrix. When the number of transmit antennas M goes to infinity, the row vectors of H are asymptotically orthogonal, and hence one has
Small scale fading parts disappear. Only large-scale fading (path-loss and shadowing) remains. They form the major part of pilot contamination.
To alleviate the effect of pilot contamination, one can only pay attention to this large scale fading (path-loss and shadowing). Fortunately, there is a partial connectivity feature in this large scale fading in practical systems. Not all the inter-cell interference links are strong enough to be attached equal importance. Only part of the links create strong interference, while others are negligible. Referring to
For example, if one has 4 BSs, 4 UEs (1 UE per BS) and 4 time slots for pilot, then the Tx (transmitter) pilot and Rx (receiver) projection design can be simple as shown in
However, in practice, the number of UE is always larger than the number of pilot slot. For example, if one has 6 BSs, 6 UEs (1 UE per BS) and 4 time slots for pilot, then the previous orthogonal pilot is unavailable. So in this example, the BS projection matrix is Φ6×4, and the UE Pilot matrix is Ψ4×6. The pilots have to be overlapping in time resources.
In a TDD system, all the users in all the cells first synchronously send uplink data signals. Next, the users send pilot sequences. BSs use these pilot sequences to estimate CSI to the users located in their cells. Then, BSs use the estimated CSI to detect the uplink data and to generate beamforming vectors for downlink data transmission. However, due to the limited channel coherence time, the pilot sequences employed by users in neighboring cells may no longer be orthogonal to those within the cell, leading to a pilot contamination problem (
For TDD-based massive MIMO transmission systems, pilot sequences are transmitted from users in the uplink to estimate channels. Let Ψk,l=(ψk,l[1], . . . , ψk,l[τ])T be the pilot sequence of user k in cell l, where τ denotes the length of the pilot sequence. Though it is not necessary, it is convenient to assume that and one uses this assumption in what follows. Ideally, the pilot sequences employed by users within the same cell and in the neighboring cells should be orthogonal, that is
Ψk,lHΨj,l′=δ[k−j]δ[l−l′] (2)
where δ[.] is defined as
In this case, a BS can obtain uncontaminated estimation of the channel vectors in the sense that they are not correlated to the channel vectors of other users.
However, the number of orthogonal pilot sequences with a given period and bandwidth is limited, which in turn limits the number of users that can be served. In order to handle more users, non-orthogonal pilot sequences are used in neighboring cells. Thus for some different k, j, l, and l′, one may have
Ψk,lHΨj,l′≠0 (4)
As a result, the estimate of the channel vector to a user becomes correlated with the channel vectors of the users with non-orthogonal pilot sequences.
In summary, in a typical multi-cell massive MIMO system, users from neighboring cells may use non-orthogonal pilots. The reason for this is very simple—the number of orthogonal pilots is smaller than the number of users. The use of non-orthogonal pilots results in the pilot contamination problem. Pilot contamination causes directed inter-cell interference, which, unlike other sources of interferences, grows together with the number of BS antennas and significantly damages the system performance Various channel estimation, precoding, and cooperation methods have been proposed to resolve this issue. However, more efficient methods with good performance, low complexity, and limited or zero cooperation between BSs are worth more intensive study.
Accordingly, an aspect of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for pilot decontamination in a massive MIMO system.
In accordance to an embodiment of the presently claimed invention, a method of topological pilot decontamination in a massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system, the system comprising one or more base stations (BSs), one or more user equipments (UEs), and a central controller, the method comprising:
Preferably, the pilot resources are located in an orthogonal domain including time domain, frequency domain, or code domain.
Preferably, the step of obtaining square topological matrix further comprises: transforming the large scale fading matrix to the square topological matrix by dividing each of the BSs, which serves multiple UEs, to virtual BSs, wherein each of the virtual BSs serves one UE and has the same parameters as its corresponding original BS.
Preferably, the step of normalizing the square topological matrix further comprises: normalizing channel gain vectors of each of the UEs in the square topological matrix with respect to a desired link channel gain, by multiplying the square topological matrix with a normalizing matrix, wherein the normalizing matrix is a diagonal matrix with the inverse of desired link channel gains as the diagonal values.
Preferably, the step of obtaining pilot matrix further comprises:
Preferably, the pilot matrix is obtained by a topological interference alignment computation, the computation comprising:
generating a K×K random matrix A0 and setting i=0;
processing iteratively the following steps:
if Ai+1 converges, break the iteration; otherwise, set i=i+1 and go to next iteration;
obtaining the pilot matrix as
Preferably, the step of performing the channel estimation further comprises: sending, by each of the UEs, pilots indicated by its respective column of the pilot matrix.
Preferably, the step of performing the channel estimation further comprises: projecting the received pilots using the optimized estimator projection matrix.
Preferably, the estimator projection matrix is obtained by Minimum mean square error (MMSE) method.
Embodiments of the present invention are described in more detail hereinafter with reference to the drawings, in which:
In the following description, methods for pilot decontamination in a massive MIMO system are set forth as preferred examples. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that modifications, including additions and/or substitutions may be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. Specific details may be omitted so as not to obscure the invention; however, the disclosure is written to enable one skilled in the art to practice the teachings herein without undue experimentation.
As discussed above, consider a system with L cells. Each cell is assumed to have K single-antenna users and a BS with M antennas, where M>>K. For purposes of illustration, one assumes that all L cells use the same set of K pilot sequences.
As the number of BS antennas grows large, i.e., M→∞, the SINR (Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio) of the k-th user in the j-th cell tends to the following limit
where dj,k,l is the large-scale channel fading coefficient. From (5), the SINR depends only on the large-scale fading factors of the channels while the small-scale fading factors and noise are averaged out. So in massive MIMO, one can utilize the strong large scale fading for pilot contamination cancelation.
As discussed above for
Referring to
As for step 502, regarding that cases whose large scale fading matrix is not square, such as each BS serving 2 UEs, one has to transform the large scale fading matrix into a square matrix. For example, each BS is divided into 2 virtual BSs, and each virtual BS corresponding to on UE. Then one normalizes the channel gain of each UE based on the desired link. In this way, the diagonal becomes 1.
In order to further explain step 502, an example is used for further illustration. Accordingly, there are 3 BSs, and 2 UEs/BS. An original large scale fading matrix is provided as follows:
When the number of UEs is not equal to the number of BSs, the large scale fading matrix is transformed to a square matrix by treating BS serving multiple UEs as multiple BSs such that the large scale fading matrix is extended to a square matrix by the virtual BSs as shown in the below matrix.
The normalized square topological matrix is determined by normalizing the channel gain of each UE according to the desired link (diagonal elements). In this example, the diagonal elements are
×diag(1.25, 0.8, 1, 0.5, 2, 1)
After normalizing each column to channel gain in desired link, and incorporating desired link channel gain in the algorithm, a normalized square topological matrix is obtained as follows.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, the normalized square topological matrix is obtained as follow:
transforming the large scale fading matrix to 2-dim matrix {circumflex over (D)} L×KL, the (l,n)-th entry of which is
transforming it to a square matrix D KL×KL the (i,n)-th entry of which is
obtaining the normalized square topological matrix by normalizing each column based on the diagonal {umlaut over (D)}
In order to clearly explain the step 503 of pilot matrix design, an example will help to understand. For example, one has 4 time slots as pilot resources, 6 BSs and 6 UEs. All UEs use same desired channel. Assume the large scale fading matrix is
By rounding the negligible entries in the large scale fading matrix to 0 with a pre-defined threshold 0.1, one obtains the partial connectivity matrix.
The dominant entries in the partial connectivity matrix greater than or equal to the threshold 0.1 will be rounded up to 0, and the negligible entries less than the threshold 0.1 can be arbitrary value X. That means, dominant interference needs to be forced to zero, and weak interference (shadow/path loss) can be arbitrary value. Then, one obtains the complementary matrix as follows:
With the complimentary matrix, one can compute and obtain a pilot matrix by matrix decomposition. Recall that one has 4 time slots as pilot resources. Then, one decomposes the complimentary matrix into a BS projection matrix Φ6×4 and an UE pilot matrix Ψ4×6 as follows.
Both of the BS projection matrix and the normalized pilot matrix satisfy the following requirements: a product of the BS projection matrix and the UE pilot matrix gives the complimentary matrix; and the BS projection matrix is of size K×T, while the normalized pilot matrix is of size T×K, where K is the number of columns of the complimentary matrix, and T is the number of the pilot resources.
Matrix decomposition can be computed by alternating projection algorithm. The pilot matrix is determined based on the UE pilot matrix.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, a pilot matrix is obtained by the following steps:
obtaining a partial connectivity matrix D by rounding negligible elements with a pre-defined threshold dth as follows:
{umlaut over (D)}({umlaut over (D)}≦dth)=0,D={umlaut over (D)}.
obtaining complimentary matrix D of the partial connectivity matrix as follows:
obtaining the matrix decomposition for this complimentary matrix as follows:
({tilde over (D)})1/2=Φ{tilde over (Ψ)}
changing back the pilot power based on the normalizing matrix as follows:
{circumflex over (Ψ)}={circumflex over (Ψ)}diag({umlaut over (D)})−1
In brief, one obtains a pilot matrix by decomposing the complimentary matrix based on the number of pilot resources (e.g., time slots).
For obtaining channel estimation, according to an embodiment of the present invention, each UE sends the pilots indicated by respective column of the pilot matrix, the estimator projection matrix is calculated using MMSE based on the square topological matrix and the pilot matrix, and channel estimation is performed using the estimator projection matrix.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, the estimator projection matrix Cjl is calculated and the channel estimation is performed by the below equations:
where ΨHi is the pilot matrix of UEs in the i-th cell, Bjl is the large scale fading matrix from the j-th cell's UEs to the l-th cell's BS, Pr is the UE uplink transmit power, T is the number of pilot resources, and L is the number of cells.
In the present invention, topological interference alignment is utilized to design the pilot with low interference. Using less time slots, interference-free pilots for more UEs can be transmitted.
In the present invention, obtaining normalized square topological matrix based on the large scale fading matrix is a pre-processing process, which is able to deal with the cases when the number of UE is not equal to the number of BS, and different UEs need different channels. Obtaining estimator projection matrix based on the pilot matrix and the square topological matrix is a post-processing process, which is able to get optimized projection matrix, especially at low SNR case.
The foregoing description of the present invention has been provided for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to the practitioner skilled in the art.
The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application, thereby enabling others skilled in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments and with various modifications that are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the following claims and their equivalence.