Partial Pilot Allocation Scheme in Multi-Cell Massive MIMO Systems for Pilot Contamination Reduction

Ahmed S. Al-hubaishi, Nor Kamariah Noordin, Aduwati Sali, Shamala Subramaniam, Ali Mohammed Mansoor and Safwan M. Ghaleb
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Ahmed S. Al-hubaishi: Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang 43400, Malaysia
Nor Kamariah Noordin: Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang 43400, Malaysia
Aduwati Sali: Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang 43400, Malaysia
Shamala Subramaniam: Department of Communication Technology and Network, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang 43400, Malaysia
Ali Mohammed Mansoor: Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia
Safwan M. Ghaleb: Faculty of Ocean Engineering Technology and Informatics, University Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Terengganu 21030, Malaysia

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: Inter-cell interference has been identified as one of the major challenges of multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO)-enabled cellular systems. This problem occurs when the same pilot sets are reused across adjacent cells to save bandwidth for data transmission. As a result, so-called pilot contamination occurs, which cannot be mitigated with an increased number of serving antennas. In this work, we proposed a partial pilot allocation scheme (PPA) to tackle the pilot contamination problem and consequently improve the uplink throughput of users in multi-cell massive MIMO systems. This was achieved by using the large-scale characteristics of the fading channel to keep users with a weak channel condition out of the effect of severe interference during the pilot allocation process. Simulation results showed that the proposed scheme outperformed both smart pilot allocation (SPA) and conventional schemes. In particular, PPA improved the uplink rate by 30% compared to the SPA—a recently proposed schema. Furthermore, our simulation results clearly showed that PPA improved the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and uplink throughput.

Keywords: pilot contamination; massive MIMO; pilot allocation; large-scale fading coefficients; pilot sequences; channel quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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